Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla TSLA, has agreed to move forward with his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter TWTR Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The move came days before Musk was expected to be deposed as part of Twitter's lawsuit to force the Tesla CEO to buy the company.
Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter in April for $54.20 per share, which works out to $44 billion. He then said he was pulling out of the deal, claiming that Twitter wasn't providing enough information about the number of bots it had on the platform. In July, Twitter hit back against Musk, filing a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery with the hopes that Musk would have to buy the company.
The shares of Twitter are up more than 12.7%, according to the news.
In its lawsuit, Twitter said that Musk's purported concern about bots was just a pretext for backing out of the deal as the stock market started to turn sour. As part of Twitter's lawsuit, Musk had expressed concern over the bots issue long before backing out of the deal, according to text messages that became public last week.
Fake accounts, also known as bots, can spread misinformation and scare off advertisers who want to sell ads to real people. According to the newly released text messages, Musk told a Twitter board member in April that drastic action was necessary to tackle bots.
This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company, he said.
This is Jack's opinion too, Musk said, referring to Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
We reached out to Twitter and lawyers for Musk for confirmation of his interest in buying Twitter and did not receive an immediate response.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley yahoofinance.com.