Man makes $250 million calling Elon Musk's bluff with Twitter

Elon Musk's decision to follow through with his initial offer to purchase Twitter for $44 billion has caused an investor to make a staggering $250 million.

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SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided to follow through with his deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media company, Twitter.

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Carl Icahn.

In what seems like a strange turn of events, Musk has decided to go ahead with the acquisition of Twitter after attempting to pull out of the deal, citing Twitter's undisclosed number of bot accounts on the platform. The SpaceX CEO initially agreed to purchase Twitter for $54.20 a share back in April, which caused the company's share price to spike to above $50 a share.

However, Musk began pushing back on Twitter over the aforementioned bot accounts on the platform, which then resulted in the Tesla CEO attempting to pull out of the deal completely, sending the company's stock price back down to the mid-$30s. Since Musk announced that he is now reversed his decision and will follow through with buying Twitter, the company's stock price has jumped by 22% in a single day to $52.

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Twitter's stock price.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn had thrown approximately $500 million at Twitter, with the majority of his purchases being made when the share price was in the mid-$30s. According to The Wall Street Journal, Icahn bought about fourteen million shares of Twitter or about 2% of the company.

Assuming Icahn hasn't sold his stake in the company and that The Wall Street Journal's sources are correct with the majority of his purchases being done when the share price was in the mid-$30s, Icahn's stake in the company is now worth about $750 million - a gain of $250 million in only a few months.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Icahn purchased large amounts of Twitter stock on the bet that Musk was bluffing with the lawsuit and that he would eventually follow through with the acquisition. A seemingly low-risk bet that made hundreds of millions, according to the Journal.

In other Elon Musk and Twitter news, the Tesla CEO recently took to Twitter to announce that purchasing Twitter is an "accelerant" to developing the "everything" app. If you are interested in reading more about Elon Musk's plan with Twitter once he has acquired it, check out the link below.

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

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