CEO of Tesla Inc,  Elon Musk, has offered $41.39 billion to buy Twitter in a hostile takeover of the social media platform. Musk's offer price of $54.20 per share represents a 38 % premium on the closing price of Twitter's stock on April 1. The 1st was the last trading day before the Tesla CEO made public he had acquired a 9.2 % stake in the company on March 14th. 

The announcement comes on the heels of Musk’s rejection of Twitter’s offer to become a member of the board. Twitter board members are restricted to 15%  share ownership. Musk’s take over plan appears to involve making the company private and has cited the platform 'has extraordinary potential' and 'I will unlock it', in a regulatory filing on Thursday. 

Musk, who has a personal net worth of around $260 billion according to Bloomberg News, criticisms of Twitter have included the need for an edit button and a different layer of verification for premium users. “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk in a letter to the company’s current board.

The colorful CEO has a history of his own tweets causing legal problems, and has been a vocal critic of Twitter in recent weeks, mostly involving his opinion of how the platform falls short on free speech principles. He explained further in the letter, “[Twitter] will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.” Musk tweeted on Saturday asking whether the social media network was 'dying' leading to speculation he would reverse the bans of people that have violated Twitter’s content standards to drive profits and users on the platform.