Text messages made public as part of Elon Musk’s court fight with Twitter (along with being highly entertaining) shed insight into his early motivations for buying the business and show how Silicon Valley heavyweights rallied to his cause.
Why it matters: The until-now private communications are a window into how quickly (and casually) billion-dollar deals can get done between the world’s wealthiest people.
- Early in the process, an advisor to FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried says the crypto billionaire could chip in to back Musk’s bid: “~$1-3b would be easy and ~$3-8b I could do,” the advisor texts.
- Several weeks later, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison offers to invest “a billion… or whatever you recommend.”
The texts also reveal how the relationship between Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal deteriorated over a matter of weeks, leading to Musk trying to take the company private before ultimately bailing on the deal.
- In one exchange, Agrawal chides Musk for tweeting “Is Twitter dying?” to which Musk responds “What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.”
- Later Musk complains that Agrawal is not working hard enough, and “doing occasional Zoom calls while drinking fruity cocktails at the Four Seasons” in Hawaii.
Other big names also make fun guest appearances in Elon’s texts:
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Joe Rogan asks, “Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?”
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Gayle King, TV personality and Oprah confidant, praises Elon’s takeover bid as a “gangsta move”.
- Jason Calacanis, investor and podcaster, wrote “Put me in the game coach! Twitter CEO is my dream job.”
Bottom line: The texts show that Musk appeared to genuinely believe that bots are a big problem for the platform (the main issue he’s cited for backing out of the deal), but his takeover bid didn’t include any conditions around bots and spam accounts, so it’s not likely to do much for his case.