Elon Musk tells Twitter that he is ‘TERMINATING’ his $44 billion takeover

Elon Musk has dramatically announced that he is pulling the plug on his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter as he rubs shoulders with other finance and tech giants at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho. 

The SpaceX founder’s legal team accused the social media giant of failing to provide accurate data on the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform.

Musk, 51, first made his offer to purchase Twitter in April after becoming the company’s biggest shareholder, since then there have been repeated indications that he was seeking to walk away from the deal since April.

The world’s wealthiest man had earlier stalled on the deal after claiming that he wanted his team to do ‘due-diligence’ over the number of fake accounts on the platform.

On the day of the announcement, Twitter’s shares were down 6% in extended trading. Musk was offering $54.20 per share in April. 

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is set to come face-to-face with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Saturday when Musk delivers the marquee address at the annual Allen and Company’s Sun Valley Conference, which Agrawal has been attending for the past three days

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping the bombshell, Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler said that Twitter were in material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement. 

Ringler wrote: ‘Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.’ He added also accused the company ‘of making ‘false and misleading representations’ when entering into the agreement.

It was previously reported that Musk would pay $1 billion if he backed out of the deal. Twitter could still attempt to hold Musk to the original deal or force a bigger payout from him walking away at the 11th hour. 

So far, there has only been a brief statement from Twitter on Musk pulling the plug

In a brief statement on Twitter, Chairman Bret Taylor said: ‘The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.’ 

That message was later retweeted by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. 

Musk and Agrawal are now set to once again come face to face at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, where Agrawal, 38, has been attending private meetings for the past three days.

The annual invite-only, conference is hosted by the investment bank Allen & Company. This year, the five-day conference, running from July 6 to 10, is being held at the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest in a tiny town of just 1,500 people.

Attendees of the conference include Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffet.  

In a letter dropping the bombshell, Musk’s legal team said that Twitter were in material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement

Musk made the announcement Friday through his lawyer Mike Ringler

Last month, Twitter allowed Musk access to its ‘firehose’, a repository of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets

One section of the letter reads: ‘Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations. For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform.’ 

Musk’s legal team also accuses Twitter of ignoring and rejecting requests to data regarding fake accounts.  

Musk had threatened to halt the deal unless the company showed proof that spam and bot accounts were fewer than 5% of users who see advertising on the social media service.

Last month, Twitter allowed Musk access to its ‘firehose’, a repository of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.

The Tesla founder’s team discovered that the number of fake accounts on the side was much higher than the 5% that was publicly disclosed, Musk said.  

 In June, Twitter’s board voted unanimously to accept Musk’s offer. 

 Musk has not tweeted about the decision to pull the teal saying. In his last tweet which was on the day before the announcement the South African billionaire wrote: ‘Super fired up for future product development with our awesome Tesla team! Such an honor to work with them.’ 

Among those weighing in on the situation was Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted: ‘Elon musk is terminating his agreement to buy Twitter: So basically Twitter has a huge amount of spam accounts —way more than they let on — and has gotten busted for it!!! As I said weeks ago spam accounts are probably 50% not 5% of Twitter users.’

The news comes days after Musk confirmed that he secretly fathered twins with Neuralink director of operations, Shivon Zilis. 

The ice hockey-loving Yale graduate and AI executive ‘tipped to run Twitter’ after Musk buys it

The news comes days after Musk confirmed that he secretly fathered twins with Neuralink director of operations, Shivon Zilis, pictured above

Court documents have revealed that Elon Musk quietly had twins with  Shivon Zilis, 36, the director of operations at Musk’s brain-machine interface company Neuralink.

Zilis, who was born in Ontario, Canada, met Musk through OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015, Insider reported. 

Zilis has been a board member at OpenAI since January 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously worked as an adviser at the company for three years. 

She is also a Fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, a startup focusing on the commercialization of science. She joined the company in 2015. 

Zilis studied economics and philosophy at Yale where she also played goalie on the women’s ice-hockey team.

In 2015, Zilis was on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category and in 2017, got the chance to use her AI expertise at Tesla. 

Just last year, Zilis posted a nod to Prince Harry’s Silicon Valley startup with a throwback picture of the two of them from 2013 when she was asked to brief him on tech startups. 

From 2017 to 2019, she was a Project Director at Tesla working on AI projects with a special focus on autopilot and chip design. 

Zilis is currently the director of operations and special projects for Neuralink and has been floated as one of the people Musk could tap to run Twitter Inc after his $44 billion deal acquisition.