A group of nearly two dozen investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firm Fidelity has invested over $7.1 billion to back the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison delivered the largest check, at $1 billion, a filing published on Thursday revealed. Sequoia has chipped in $800 million, VyCapital $700 million, Binance financed $500 million, and Andreessen Horowitz has invested $400 million, the amended 13D filing said. Notably, no investor has put in more than $1 billion and large PE firms are still MIA.
Among those backing Musk in the fresh financing is Qatar, which as you may remember, has a poor track record with free speech.
Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia has also committed to providing nearly 35 million shares in Twitter to retain a stake following the company’s takeover by Musk, the disclosure said. Musk said he is engaging with certain additional existing shareholders including Twitter co-founder and former chief executive Jack Dorsey to give them the option to roll over their shares.
As a result of the new investment, Musk said the margin loan of $12.5 billion he had received from Morgan Stanley and other banks has been cut to $6.25 billion. He also increased his total equity commitment to $27.25 billion.
This is a developing story. More to follow…
