- Elon Musk said he doesn’t care about the economics of buying Twitter at a TED2022 conference.
- He said he wanted to acquire the platform because it will be important to “future civilization.”
- Musk championed Twitter’s inclusivity and credibility, adding it’s “not a way to make money.”
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he doesn’t care about the economics of acquiring Twitter.
His comments came after a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on April 14 showed the billionaire offered to buy the social media platform for $43 billion. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk said in a letter to Twitter chairman Bret Taylor included in the SEC filing.
Musk said his interest in buying the company is not due to monetary reasons but rather to aid the interests of civilization.
When asked why he made the billion-dollar offer in an interview last week at the TED2022 conference, Musk told TED’s Chris Anderson: “I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.”
According to Musk, it is vital for people to have both the “reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” He told Anderson Twitter accomplishes this as a “de facto town square.”
The offer also came from a “strong, intuitive sense” that having a public platform that is “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk added.
It’s “not a way to make money,” Musk said, adding, “I don’t care about the economics at all.”
During the conversation with Anderson, Musk didn’t claim he would be the perfect leader for Twitter. He noted there would be “quite a few errors” if he were to acquire the platform.
Musk stressed that he was unsure whether he would be able to buy the company at all. However, an SEC regulatory filing on Thursday showed Musk had secured financing commitments totaling $46.5 billion to buy out Twitter.
Twitter has publicly acknowledged the deal offer but has yet to respond further.
On April 14, the company said it would “carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders.”