Twitter shares surge after Elon Musk buys 9.2% stake in social media platform

Twitter’s share price rose by about 26% in premarket trading on Monday, 04 April 2022 after it emerged that Tesla Inc. chief executive officer Elon Musk had bought a 9.2% stake in the platform to become its biggest shareholder.

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk’s stake is worth about $2.89 billion.

Musk, the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has has over 80 million Twitter followers since joining the site in 2009.

It is not immediately clear what he intends to use the shares for.

 However, Musk has in the past been critical of Twitter and its policies, saying the company is undermining democracy.

According to  Wikipedia, Elon Musk, 50, is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.

With an estimated net worth of around $270 billion, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index .

Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17 to avoid conscription.

He was enrolled at Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career.