Elon Musk has officially acquired Twitter on 25 April 2022, in a transaction valued at $44 billion.

The deal came 21 days after Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. on April 4. The $54.20 per share price will give shareholders a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on the first of April. That was the last trading day Twitter had prior to Musk’s offer to purchase the social media firm.

Elon Musk also made a statement during the acquisition announcement on Monday and he highlighted how free speech is needed in society. “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 explained. The Tesla executive and now owner of Twitter further said:

"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."