It’s happening: Elon Musk strikes deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion

Enlarge / Elon Musk at a press conference at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas on February 10, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson)

Twitter's board of directors has agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk for $44 billion, the company announced Monday.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in the purchase announcement. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential—I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

The deal, pending shareholder approval and expected to close later this year, comes just 10 days after the Twitter board approved a poison pill to prevent a hostile takeover in response to Musk's attempt to buy the company. Board members started taking Musk's offer more seriously after he lined up $46.5 billion in financing. The sale agreement was announced hours after reports that a deal between Twitter and Musk was close.