Elon Musk becomes largest Twitter shareholder after $2.9 billion stake purchase

Elon Musk made a surprising move after it was announced that he purchased a 9.2% Twitter stake worth $2.9 billion. The deal made the Tesla and SpaceX chief the largest individual shareholder in the social microblogging and social networking service company.

CNN Business reported that the news of Musk's share purchase sent Twitter's shares soaring 20% in pre-market trading. The 50-year-old billionaire did not divulge how much he actually paid for the deal, but his stake was said to be worth $2.9 billion in Friday's close of trading and increased to $3.5 billion in early Monday.

It was added that in his filing, Musk did not mention the purpose of the acquisition as well. His plans for owning a large stake in Twitter were not disclosed either.

Then again, it was pointed out that prior to his move to buy shares, he is a known critic of Twitter for its policies; thus, the acquisition was very unexpected. In fact, just last month, he said he is considering creating a new social media platform as most sites are "failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy."

But now that he has bought an almost 10% stake in Twitter, business insiders opined that this could be an indication that Elon Musk will soon take a more active role in how this social media platform is operated.

"I think he intends to go active and force change at Twitter," a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, Dan Ives, said. "This is a shot across the bow at Twitter's board and management team to start discussions."

The tech analyst added that it is not realistic for the world's richest man on the planet to build a new platform from scratch, so it makes more sense if he will just tweak Twitter based on what the users want, especially the "free speech."

In any case, Ives could be right, as Fox Business reported that Elon Musk just toyed with Twitter not long after becoming its major shareholder. This was because he tweeted to his followers: "Do you want an edit button?"

He then launched a poll for people to answer "yes" or "no" and deliberately misspelled them to read "yse" and "on." The misspellings are obviously a reference to Twitter users' inability to edit typos once their tweets are posted.

More than two million people have participated, and as of this time, more than 73% want the edit button. There are still 17 hours remaining before the voting ends, so the figure could still go up. If the "yes" wins, Elon Musk is likely to make it happen as the largest Twitter shareholder now.