Hey @Jack! Are you back?
It always seemed like Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s most visible co-founder, author of the platform’s first tweet, and its mercurial and reluctant one-time CEO, wasn’t entirely along for the ride as his former company leaned into censoring certain users and content in the months leading up to his resignation.
How things have already changed.
Dorsey is among a new group of investors being floated by Elon Musk, the free-speech champion massing billions to complete his purchase Twitter, to participate as an investor in his private version of the company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Thursday.
The more than $7 billion in new money includes 19 investors, some of whom are current Twitter shareholders – including Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital, Qatar Holding, and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia. Equity commitments range from $1 billion (Ellison) on down to $5 million (Honeycomb Asset Management).
It wasn’t immediately clear how the $7 billion would fit into the standing $44 billion offer that Musk made for the company, which was accepted late last month. But the new SEC filing suggests that “contribution commitments” – like Dorsey retaining some of his investment in the new private company – “may replace portions of the financing commitments previously reported by the Reporting Person [Musk] in connection with the Merger Agreement and the Merger contemplated thereby.”
Dorsey resigned as Twitter CEO in November 2021, and ever since has hinted at his discontent with the company’s leadership – its board in particularly.
Meanwhile, Musk and Dorsey have been building a rapport since long before Twitter was a twinkle in the Tesla and SpaceX founder’s eye – a relationship that developed at least partly Twitter. After the company accepted Musk’s takeover offer, Dorsey said Musk was the “singular solution that I trust” to fix the company’s operational and PR problems, issues that have been mostly centered on its censorship choices.