Elon Musk joins Twitter’s board after acquiring a 9.2% stake, says “significant improvements” coming to the platform

• After taking several potshots at the company, Tesla cofounder Elon Musk is now joining Twitter’s board of directors.
  
• Earlier, it was revealed in regulatory filings that Musk had acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the single largest shareholder of the company.
  
• Musk says he will bring “significant improvements” to the platform, possibly including the highly-requested edit button.
  

Tesla cofounder Elon Musk is joining Twitter's board of directors days after acquiring a 9.2% stake in the social media giant. The announcement was made by Twitter's new chief executive officer, Parag Agrawal.

Making the announcement, Agrawal said that Twitter’s board had been in talks with Elon Musk over the past few weeks. He even went on to acknowledge that Musk is an “intense critic” of the social media company, stating that this is “exactly what we need” to make the service stronger.


Musk joined in on the conversation immediately, saying that “significant improvements” are coming to Twitter.


It is worth noting that Musk has been running polls of late about Twitter, on Twitter, asking his followers to give their opinions about matters like freedom of speech on the platform, as well as the highly-requested edit button.


Musk also acknowledged the problem of cryptocurrency spam on the platform.

Musk’s involvement makes investors happy

The Twitter stock posted its biggest gain yesterday since listing on the stock exchanges, with a surge of 27% at the market close. At the moment, in pre-market, Twitter’s shares are up by over 7%, suggesting that the investors are bullish about Musk’s closer involvement with the company.

Musk is an avid Twitter user and controversies have followed him on the platform

Elon Musk is an avid Twitter user, which also explains why he has had first-hand suggestions for the social media company. However, his Twitter use has landed him in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Back in 2018, Musk announced on Twitter that he had enough funding to take Tesla private, after alleging that his electric car company was often the target of bears trying to drive the stock price down.

He had to subsequently reach a deal with the SEC to monitor his use of Twitter. Both Tesla and Musk had to each pay a fine of $20 million, and Musk had to step down as chairman for three years.

In another poll that Musk ran on Twitter, the Tesla cofounder asked his followers if he should sell a 10% stake in the company.


After 3.5 million votes – with 58% of them saying yes – Musk offloaded a $5 billion stake in Tesla.

Apart from this, Musk also (in)famously once tweeted that the Tesla share price is “too high”.

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