Elon Musk holds 9.2% passive stake in Twitter, SEC filing shows

Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of electric car maker Tesla, holds a 9.2% stake in micro-blogging website Twitter Inc, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 13G filing showed on Monday. 

As per the record, Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter. The stake is worth over $2.89 billion after the social media giant’s shares surged more than 25% in the premarket Monday, trading around $49.40 per share.

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“Amount beneficially owned: 73,486,938 shares consisting of shares of Common Stock held by the Elon Musk Revocable T 2003 for which Eon Musk is the sole Trustee,” the SEC filing stated.

Musk has more than 80 million followers on Twitter. Last month, the Space X founder had said that he was giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform.

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The Tesla CEO has on several occassions raised questions about his  ability to communicate freely on Twitter, tweeting last month about free speech and the social media platform.

“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he tweeted.

Also last month, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which Musk had to have someone pre-approve his posts on Twitter.

The SEC is tryning to subpoena Musk about his tweets, and that his move to throw out a 2018 court agreement that his tweets be pre-approved is not valid.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission also disclosed publicly that it is investigating Musk’s November 6, 2021 tweets that asked followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake. The commission confirmed that it issued administrative subpoenas while investigating whether Musk and Tesla are complying with disclosure controls in the 2018 agreement.

The commission also is investigating whether Tesla described accurately in public filings with the agency whether it complied with disclosure controls.