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Musk may buy Twitter after all

Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter to buy the company at the agreed-upon price.

A close-up of Elon Musk winking mid-speech, behind a microphone

Elon Musk sent Twitter a letter proposing his purchase of the company.

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Trading of Twitter shares was briefly halted midday as CNBC and Bloomberg reported that Elon Musk now plans to go through with his deal to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share. The news was later confirmed.

Musk sent a letter to Twitter with his proposal to buy the company, according to an SEC filing. Twitter said it has received the letter and intends to close the deal at the originally agreed-upon price of $54.20 a share.

Musk and Twitter have been in a legal battle to push the Tesla CEO to buy Twitter since July, when Musk filed to back out of his proposed $44 billion acquisition. Musk tried to walk out of the deal based on allegations that Twitter was misstating the number of bots and spam accounts on the platform, which Twitter rejected. A trial in the case is scheduled to begin on Oct. 17.

The news coincidentally broke just as Twitter employees were near the start of a three-hour meeting to plan its 2023 strategy, according to reporter Casey Newton. "I am sitting on 2023 company wide strategy readouts and I guess we are going to collectively ignore what’s going on," Twitter employee Rumman Chowdhury tweeted.

Twitter shares jumped 15% on the news before being halted.

 Sarah Roach

Sarah (Sarahroach_) writes for Source Code at Protocol. She's based in Boston and can be reached at sroach@protocol.com

elon musk twitter
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