Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey bets Elon Musk could change the social platform’s fortunes.
According to certainties deposits On Monday night, Dorsey chose to transfer his ownership stake in the company to Musk’s new private company. Although Musk had said in the months leading up to the deal that he was in talks with Dorsey to transfer his stake, neither man had confirmed the deal until the filings were announced on Oct. 31.
Dorsey owned more than 18 million shares in Twitter, worth about $1 billion. He could have cashed in those shares for $54.20 each when Musk took the company private, instead he will end up saving Musk about $1 billion off his purchase price by rolling over those shares.
The rollover will keep Dorsey one of Twitter’s largest shareholders, after Musk and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who have invested about $1.9 billion worth of Twitter stock in Musk’s private company.
Dorsey and Musk are friends, and the Twitter co-founder has endorsed Musk’s takeover bid.
“Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is ‘maximally trusted and broadly inclusive’ is the right one,” he tweeted after Musk launched his acquisition. “This is also [Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s] purpose, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right way. … I believe it with all my heart.”
While Agrawal was close to Dorsey, he didn’t share that connection with Musk, who fired him for a reason following the closing of the Twitter deal. It’s not immediately clear why Musk terminated Agrawal, or whether the former CEO Musk or the company will try to arbitrate the decision.
