Voluble billionaire Elon Musk may be finally ready to close that giant Twitter deal – at least for today.
Musk filed a letter in court on Monday to restart the deal at the originally agreed upon terms, according to a Bloomberg report. The news comes days before Musk was due to be deposed in a case seeking to throw out the deal — and just days after some of Musk’s private texts between associates, friends, and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were released in discovery. The newly released messages shed light on how Musk views Twitter, its new features (like Twitter Blue, which he hates), and the deal itself.
Up to this moment, Musk has argued that Twitter is lying about the number of bots on its service, underestimating them by orders of magnitude. After demanding more transparency, Musk sought to terminate the deal. Twitter wouldn’t let him, which is how they ended up in court.
News of the deal possibly being back on has sent Twitter’s stock soaring until trading was halted mid-day.
In the hours leading up to this news, Musk was busy tweeting about Russia and Ukraine, sparring on Twitter with both chess master and activist Gary Kasparov and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has yet to comment publicly on the report.
As of this writing, there were no new filings from Musk or Twitter with the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) regarding the deal.
We did, by the way, ask Musk in a Tweet if the deal is back on and got no response.
This story is developing…