Elon Musk secures $7.1B funding from Larry Ellison, Sequoia, Binance for Twitter bid
Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion has been given a huge boost with funding from Ellison, Sequoia, Binance, Vy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and others
Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has secured $7.1 billion in funding from past investors and connections to ease fears around his ability to finance his $43 billion proposal to purchase . The money comes from organisations and people with whom Musk has worked in the past, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Ellison contributed the largest amount to the pool with a $1 billion check, followed by Sequoia with $800 million, $700 million from Vy Capital, crypto exchange Binance gave $500 million, and Andreessen Horowitz with $400 million.
Ellison is on the board of Tesla with Musk, and is a self-described close friend of the richest man in the world. Vy Capital is also an investor in another of Musk's startups, The Boring Company, which recently raised $675 million.
Among other investors are Fidelity and Qatar Holding. Saudi Arabian investor Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, who was initially opposed to the buyout, has agreed to pledge $1.89 billion worth of shares into the deal rather than cashing out.
Musk has also said that he is engaging with some existing shareholders such as co-founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey to roll over their shares into new ownership as well. Dorsey had recently called Musk the "singular solution" he trusted to revamp Twitter's mission to provide a digital social good.
As a result of this new funding, Musk's leveraged loan of $12.5 billion from banks such as Morgan Stanley has been reduced to $6.25 billion. He has increased his total equity commitment to $27.25 billion from a previous amount of $21 billion.
Edited by Kanishk Singh