Discussion

• @alwaleed_talal @alwaleed_talal on x

  @elonmusk ... Great to connect with you my “new” friend @elonmusk🤝🏻 I believe you will be an excellent leader for @Twitter to propel & maximise its great potential @Kingdom_KHC & I look forward to roll our ~$1.9bn in the “new” @Twitter and join you on this exciting journey

• @bhorowitz @bhorowitz on x

  1/First some news, we are joining Elon Musk's bid for Twitter and investing $400MM into the company.

• @bhorowitz @bhorowitz on x

  3/While Twitter has great promise as a public square, it suffers from a myriad of difficult issues ranging from bots to abuse to censorship. Being a public company solely reliant on an advertising business model exacerbates all of these.

• @petermccormack Peter McCormack on x

  Qatar Holding LLC investing alongside @elonmusk... a subsidiary of the Qatar sovereign wealth fund. Hardly the bastions of free speech and human rights. https://twitter.com/...

• @rmac18 @rmac18 on x

  Meta/Facebook comms are not responding to ?s about board member Marc Andreessen's firm's investment into Twitter, a competitor. Andreessen's firm, A16Z, committed $400 million toward Elon Musk's Twitter take private deal. Andreessen has been on the FB/Meta board since 2008.

• @markdistef Mark Di Stefano on x

  Elon Musk files new paperwork showing he's got more than $7bn of equity financing to roll into his Twitter purchase... including Binance, some Qatari group and a Saudi billionaire https://www.sec.gov/... https://twitter.com/...

• @markdistef Mark Di Stefano on x

  I do wonder what happened between the Saudi Prince rejecting Musk's offer out of hand... to going “sure sign me up for private Musk Twitter”. https://twitter.com/...

• @bhorowitz @bhorowitz on x

  4/Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.

• @mikeisaac @mikeisaac on x

  twitter filed a proxy statement at 930 at night because of a reply that (founder, board member, former ceo) Jack Dorsey made to Ben Horowitz when BH was announcing the a16z equity investment in Elon's takeover bid. material info via @reply function! https://twitter.com/...

• @bigblackjacobin Edward Ongweso Jr on x

  Sure Musk cares about free speech. That's why he's accepting over $2 billion in funding from Qatar and a Saudi prince. Yeah Musk thinks Twitter is a public square. That's why he's accepting $$$ from billionaires and VCs who spend $$$ on duping the public. https://www.vice.com/...

• @cz_binance @cz_binance on x

  Crypto Twitter https://www.theblockcrypto.com/ ...

• @digg @digg on x

  Elon Musk has secured more than $7bn in funding for his $44bn takeover of Twitter from a group of investors including the tech tycoon Larry Ellison, the Qatar state investment fund and the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @kurtwagner8 Kurt Wagner on x

  VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing in Twitter https://twitter.com/...

• @seldo Laurie Voss on x

  Twitter is pleased to announce its new investment consortium, the Legion of Super Villains. https://twitter.com/...

• @maggienyt Maggie Haberman on x

  Trump was just at the wedding of the son of the last name on this list this past weekend > https://twitter.com/...

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Elon gets some equity partners for Twitter takeover, including DFJ and Sequoia Capital. https://twitter.com/...

• @jack @jack on x

  @bhorowitz this is true. it needs cover for a while.

• @arashmassoudi Arash Massoudi on x

  NEW Binance boss on his $500m commitment to Musk's Twitter deal “We..heard that Musk was looking for 3rd party investors, and are we interested? We immediately said that we are” “He didn't have a plan for Twitter. There isn't, like, a business plan” https://www.ft.com/...

• @katie_roof Katie Roof on x

  A source familiar with Twitter's thinking said that Facebook's poor stock performance played a role in Twitter accepting the acquisition offer. It was seen as an indication that social media stocks wouldn't trade favorably enough to justify turning down an offer at that price

• @ryangrim Ryan Grim on x

  Twitter suffers from censorship problems, yes. I wonder if selling it to a guy whose company is half-dependent on China will help that problem. https://twitter.com/...

• @eringriffith Erin Griffith on x

  so the pitch is, i am elon musk. u in? https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @alexstamos Alex Stamos on x

  Ben was always the more thoughtful of the founders of A16Z (I once watched Marc type away on his Blackberry while Ben empathetically announced a layoff at Loudcloud) and I hope he has a mental model of how the new ownership will reduce abuse and “censorship” simultaneously.

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson says firm will retain lawyers (or use existing counsel) to make sure everything is above board when it comes to info sharing on Twitter with firm cofounder and Facebook director Marc Andreessen.

• @pt @pt on x

  @mmasnick @TechmemeChatter No, it's only censorship when it's good speech. Duh. When the majority agrees it's bad we call it spam. Everybody knows there's no value in spam.

• @noupside Renee DiResta on x

  @pt ... i am somewhat confused as to how we got back on bots as being a major impactful issue of the day. a fair bit of work was done to downrank them; they're still present but not weighted in trends etc. they're annoying but vast #s come down.

• @mehdirhasan Mehdi Hasan on x

  But...but... I was told he was a ‘free speech absolutist’? 🤔 https://twitter.com/...

• @rschooley @rschooley on x

  Bet there's going to be some pretty notable free speech carve outs. https://twitter.com/...

• @moorehn Heidi N. Moore on x

  It's good that Andreessen Horowitz is part of Musk's deal, because everything they touch in terms of social media falls apart, so it increases the chances that this deal will fall apart imo. https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @mmasnick Mike Masnick on x

  “bots to abuse to censorship” You see, the solution to the “bots” and “abuse” is what you (incorrectly) refer to as “censorship,” so when you list them all together, it raises some, well, questions... https://twitter.com/...

• @tomaxwell Thomas Maxwell on x

  waiting for blackwater to announce it's pitch in https://twitter.com/...

• @bhorowitz @bhorowitz on x

  2/We invested, because we believe in Ev and Jack's vision to connect the world and we believe in Elon's brilliance to finally make it what it was meant to be.

• @alexstamos Alex Stamos on x

  One of the areas of “bots” and “abuse” where Twitter has greatly improved is in detecting and taking down government-run influence operations. Here are some examples related to A16Z's new co-investor, the House of Saud: https://fsi-live.s3.us-west- 1.amazonaws.com/... https://fsi…

• @mattbc Matthew Cortland on x

  This transaction should not be allowed to close. The regime that murdered Jamal Khashoggi should not be allowed to purchase twitter. https://twitter.com/...

• @binance @binance on x

  Probably nothing. https://twitter.com/...

• @taylorlorenz Taylor Lorenz on x

  “Free speech” Musk is now accepting investment $ from a Saudi prince of a Kingdom w a history of human rights abuses/censorship and a16z, a VC firm whose cofounder spent much of the pandemic platforming far right extremists & pledging to destroy the media https://t.co/NEz2NTQSoE

• @benwerd Ben Werdmuller on x

  As always I'm curious about the LPs behind these investors. Eg, who is Binance fronting for? https://twitter.com/...

• @rmac18 Ryan Mac on x

  After publicly questioning a Saudi prince (and Twitter shareholder) on his country's approach to personal freedoms, Elon Musk accepts his backing. This is what we call avoiding the prompt. https://t.co/gCBYqurqAo

• @sarahfrier Sarah Frier on x

  Wonder what Zuckerberg thinks about a board member investing in Twitter: https://t.co/6I6JfRkjST

• @benedictevans Benedict Evans on x

  So when does a16z flip Twitter to Microsoft?

• @mmasnick Mike Masnick on x

  Larry Ellison has spent the last few years lobbying for all sorts of laws that would effectively kill Twitter. Now he's buying into Elon's Twitter. 🤔 https://t.co/tAaIL2z3TW

• @mcnees Robert McNees on x

  It's like he made a list of people and organizations who are tired of being criticized on Twitter and would jump at an opportunity to shut down that aspect of the platform. https://twitter.com/...

• @carnage4life @carnage4life on x

  It's illuminating to see what backers of Elon's acquisition consider the top problems of Twitter - bots - abuse - censorship - ads biz model My take 1. Fixing bots & abuse solves real problems 2. Less censorships conflicts with #1 3. Hard to make people pay when other apps free h…

• @tonyfratto Tony Fratto on x

  Well, I have to admit, Qatar and Saudi Arabia do come to mind whenever I think of free speech... https://twitter.com/...

• @anildash @anildash on x

  The folks who were hanging out in Clubhouse rooms called “how to destroy the NY Times”, and who subsidized Substack contriving a culture war, have bought into owning this place next. All this after already profiting from genocide on that other social network. https://twitter.com/…

• @loganbartlett Logan Bartlett on x

  Love it when Sequoia and a16z mark up my investments

• @teresa_longwell Teresa Longwell on x

  So, Elon Musk secured over $7 billion in equity for the Twitter takeover... Among the list of financial backers is Witkoff Capital. Guess who just had a wedding at Mar-A-Lago??????????? Zack Witkoff, President of Witkoff Capital! BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!! https://twitter.com/...

• @mattturck Matt Turck on x

  You say VC Twitter is silly then why did a16z, Sequoia and DJF just acquired it for $1.3B

• @maxkennerly Max Kennerly on x

  Musk has raised billions from shady folks like Saudi royalty and Larry Ellison to buy Twitter. Yeah, sure, this is about “protecting free speech” and not about the wealthy elite seizing a forum that has caused them trouble. https://twitter.com/...

• @gartenberg Michael Gartenberg on x

  Note to self, do not on invest money with anyone on this list. https://twitter.com/...

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Also worth noting that @A16z, which is co-led by a Facebook board member (@pmarca), will now be a shareholder in Twitter. Curious how much info rights it will have.

• @ryan_browne_ Ryan Browne on x

  @elonmusk W/some thoughts from Grayscale's @Sonnenshein & Polygon's @Fwiz on how a Musk-run Twitter could shape up crypto-wise (tip @Techmeme) https://www.cnbc.com/...

• @alex @alex on x

  so basically elon is turning to friends, autoritarian regimes, and foreign crypto companies to fund his twitter takeover? hmm https://twitter.com/...

• @kantrowitz Alex Kantrowitz on x

  “Twitter and its employees, meanwhile, have been left hovering in a state of total uncertainty. On Wednesday, executives opened a companywide all-hands meeting with a slide titled, ‘Why bother?’” https://www.bloomberg.com/...

• @teroterotero Tero Kuittinen on x

  Tesla now down -4.2%. The thing about Elon's sense of Ozymandias type omnipotence is that he likely cannot grasp how worried Tesla investors are. His Twitter CEO stint will be super dramatic & he is now wrapped up with intrigue with all kinds of princes and emperors across globe

• @karlbode Karl Bode on x

  Elon is more mythological figure than human being at this point only person in the ENTIRE WORLD with the courage to tackle the non-existent problem of conservative twitter censorship https://t.co/JSfD2zxnuV

• @carnage4life @carnage4life on x

  A16Z is joining in with Elon Musk to buy Twitter along with Binance, Sequoia, Fidelity and Larry Ellison. There is definitely some compelling business case being pitched beyond owning the libs with free speech. Can't wait to see how Twitter changes to make more money. https://twi…

• @silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x

  Binance, the world's biggest exchange, is putting $500m into Twitter. Hopefully that helps the crypto spam become even more finely targeted. https://twitter.com/...

• @coloradotravis @coloradotravis on x

  Ah cool. Binance in on the deal should really help with the incessant crypto spam bot problem. https://twitter.com/...

• @shaig Shai Goldman on x

  Sequoia, a16z, DFJ and Binance are some of the most notable from a VC/tech perspective https://twitter.com/...

• @vladsavov Vlad Savov on x

  Here's who else is buying Twitter now: Qatar, a16z, Binance, Larry Ellison et al. How it started: World's richest man is buying Twitter and setting speech free. How it's going: World's rich men are buying Twitter and setting it free from public accountability. https://twitter.com…

• @patrickw Patrick W. Watson on x

  These are investments, not gifts. Either A) Musk convinced them he won't run Twitter into the ground, or B) He gave them other, as yet unknown inducements to compensate for the new risks they will be taking. https://www.wsj.com/...

• @ericjackson Eric Jackson on x

  Larry Ellison is putting $1B into Twitter. His billion into Tesla worked out.

• @thedomino Dominic Chu on x

  Larry is the only 10-figure commitment on that list $TWTR $ORCL https://twitter.com/...

• @jsphctrl Joseph Cotterill on x

  Your favourite stock promoter has halved his margin loan on the buyout of this hellsite, and is offering an equity ticket to the show for as little as $5mn. https://www.sec.gov/...

• @macaesbruno @macaesbruno on x

  Free speech is assured https://twitter.com/...

• @pekingmike Mike Forsythe on x

  Serious question. Do we know who the limited partners are in some of these funds? https://twitter.com/...

• @nkulw Noah Kulwin on x

  7 is a lot less than 44 just fyi for those of you who aren't “math heads” https://twitter.com/...

• @loudmouthjulia Julia Alexander on x

  Jokes aside, Ellison backing the bid with $1B isn't surprising considering his place on Tesla's board, or considering that he has Elon's name in his Twitter bio. Clearly a show of faith in His Guy even if the business isn't where it needs to be, and is will be difficult to revamp

• @loudmouthjulia Julia Alexander on x

  Larry Ellison investing $1B in Elon's financing for the Twitter acquisition, not necessarily that long after trying (?) to own TikTok in the US (?) has really big, “somehow I'll be involved with an app powered by an algorithm that dictates public conversation and culture” energy.…

• @dearsarah Sarah Szalavitz on x

  Musk secures over $7 billion in funding from (mostly very conservative, very Trumpy) investors including Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital, Brookfield & Qatar Holdings. https://www.cnbc.com/... It's not clear if Elon Musk has enough cash to buy Twitter https://www.axios.com/...

• @muradahmed Murad Ahmed on x

  Musk reveals he has raised $7.14bn of funding for his $44bn buyout of Twitter. - Larry Ellison in for $1bn, Sequoia $800mn, VyCapital $700mn, Binance $500mn. - Margin loan cut by half to $6.25bn. Increases total equity commitment to $27.25bn Story in @FT https://www.ft.com/...

• @peter_tl Peter Thal Larsen on x

  Incidentally @larryellison, who has committed $1bn to Musk's Twitter buyout, sent his only tweet to date almost a decade ago https://twitter.com/...

• @sridinats Sridhar Natarajan on x

  Critical note in filing: Musk's margin loan commitment for deal cut in half to $6.25 billion. $TSLA $TWTR https://twitter.com/...

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Notably missing from this list: @jack

• @firstadopter @firstadopter on x

  Larry Ellison, Fido, Binance, Sequoia $TWTR https://www.sec.gov/... https://twitter.com/...

• @ivanthek @ivanthek on x

  Looks like Elon found some equity investors. $TWTR https://twitter.com/...

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  It's really a kind of sad list, in a way... no one committing more than $1b... no big PE firm signed on.

• @digitalshields Mike Shields on x

  “If you said to me that TikTok went away, that would be a disaster. But Twitter going away? Yeah, whatever.” https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @intelwire @intelwire on x

  Take away the revenue, and Twitter just becomes a giant manifestation of Musk's id, in which we all try to survive https://twitter.com/...

• @slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x

  This is exactly it. And the point we've been making from the start. Content moderation is not for us, the users, it's for those footing the bill: advertisers. Not one advertiser will sponsor Daily Stormer, so why would they sponsor a platform filled with the same content? https:/…

• @tiffkhsu Tiffany Hsu on x

  What happens when your company, which is funded almost entirely by ads, is bought by a guy who says he hates them? @kateconger and I consider the tricky relationship between Twitter, Elon Musk and Madison Avenue. https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @bmorrissey Brian Morrissey on x

  Doubtful he's going to be at the Medialink dinner in Cannes. https://www.nytimes.com/...

• @kateconger Kate Conger on x

  really interesting how pretty much every tech company built its business through advertising, and how many are now trying to find a way out of the model (thinking about Apple's ATT and where it's pushing the industry to go) https://twitter.com/...

• @ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald on x

  Democrats seeking to use corporate power to force @ElonMusk to maintain their regime of internet censorship is about as perfect an expression of that party's values and identity as anything I can think of: https://cnn.com/...

• @accountabletech @accountabletech on x

  This comes after we sent a letter with 25 other organizations to “Twitter's top advertisers to demand that Musk commit to upholding 'standards of community trust and safety, and to pull their advertising spending from Twitter if he does not.'"https://www.bloomberg.com/ ...

• @tsgiles Tom Giles on x

  Some advertisers are skittish about their as appearing alongside unfiltered content when @elonmusk takes over. Twitter has aggressive plans to set them at ease at this week's UpFronts ... scoop by @MaxwellAdler https://www.bloomberg.com/...

• @lmoses Lucia Moses on x

  Salespeople will be salespeople, but this is ridiculous https://www.bloomberg.com/...