Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder

Twitter’s share price jumped 26% in pre-market trading on Monday after a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% passive stake in the social media company.

The stake is worth $2.89 billion, based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday. The filing shows that Musk made the purchase on March 14 and he now owns 73,486,938 shares.

However, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC that the move “eventually could lead to some sort of buyout.” He added: “Musk could try to take a more aggressive stance here on Twitter.”

A frequent user of the platform, Elon Musk has more than 80 million Twitter followers. His tweets have occasionally gotten him into trouble. Musk wrote recently that 50% of the messages he posts on Twitter are sent while sitting on the “porcelain throne.” Last week, the billionaire revealed he was thinking about creating a social media platform because Twitter is “failing to adhere to free speech principle.”

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