A group of nearly two dozen investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firm Fidelity has invested over $7.1 billion to back the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also an investor in Tesla, delivered the largest check, at $1 billion, a Thursday filing revealed. Sequoia has chipped in $800 million, VyCapital $700 million, Binance financed $500 million, and Andreessen Horowitz has invested $400 million, the amended 13D filing said. Notably, no investor has put in more than $1 billion and large PE firms are still MIA.
Among those backing Musk in the fresh financing is Qatar, which as you may remember, has a poor track record with free speech.
Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia has also committed to providing nearly 35 million shares in Twitter to retain a stake following the company’s takeover by Musk, the disclosure said. Musk said he is engaging with certain additional existing shareholders including Twitter co-founder and former chief executive Jack Dorsey to give them the option to roll over their shares.
As a result of the new investment, Musk said the margin loan of $12.5 billion he had received from Morgan Stanley and other banks has been cut to $6.25 billion. He also increased his total equity commitment to $27.25 billion.
The new investment will ease the burden on Musk as he races to secure tens of billions of dollars to buy Twitter. Late last month, he sold around 9.6 million shares of Tesla, worth about $8.5 billion. The move sank the electric car’s shares, prompting the billionaire to assure shareholders that he did not plan to sell any more Tesla shares.