The Saudi prince who initially blasted Elon Musk’s efforts to buy Twitter has had a sudden change of heart and is now praising the tech mogul as the company’s “excellent leader.”
Elon Musk announced today he has secured $7b of equity financing to roll into his Twitter purchase.
The Tesla CEO has managed to pull in some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and international capital.
In doing so, he got a recalcitrant Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to bend the knee and come along for the ride by rolling over his stock into the new company.
Alwaleed announced he and the Kingdom are putting up around $1.9 billion in funding after an apparent discussion with Musk.
Reporter Mark Di Stefano said: “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.
“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’.”
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 billionairehttps://t.co/EmD3YZIQ0W pic.twitter.com/h1JtbzUNJp
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) May 5, 2022
When Musk announced his bid, Prince Alwaleed publicly slammed the move, saying on Twitter: “I don’t believe that the proposed offer by @elonmusk ($54.20) comes close to the intrinsic value of @Twitter given its growth prospects.
“Being one of the largest & long-term shareholders of Twitter, @Kingdom_KHC & I reject this offer.”
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
— الوليد بن طلال (@Alwaleed_Talal) May 5, 2022
Musk fired back with it:
“Interesting. Just two questions, if I may.
“How much of Twitter does the Kingdom own, directly & indirectly?
“What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?”
Today, Alwaleed changed his tune, tweeting:
“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.”
Ben Horowitz, a top silicon valley venture capitalist, said:
“First some news, we are joining Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter and investing $400MM into the company.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
