Elon Musk puts $44 billion Twitter deal on hold over fake accounts

• Elon Musk has announced that the $44 billion Twitter deal is on hold.
• The Tesla cofounder claimed that the deal has been put on hold to verify Twitter’s estimate of fake users.
• Musk has not revealed how he intends to verify Twitter’s claim.

Elon Musk has announced that his $44 billion acquisition of social media giant has been put on hold. The Tesla cofounder has revealed that the deal has been put on hold pending an investigation on fake users.

According to a Reuters report, Twitter in its filing had estimated that false or spam accounts represent less than 5% of its monetizable monthly daily active users during Q1 2022.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Elon Musk said in a tweet.

Twitter had served over 229 million users with advertisements during the quarter. As per the company, less than 11.45 million of these users were fake.

Twitter's share price slumped nearly 20% following Musk’s tweet that the acquisition has been put on hold. At the same time, Tesla’s share price rose by nearly 5%.

In one of his earliest tweets regarding Twitter acquisition, Musk has said “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!” He further added that he wanted to “authenticate all real humans.” It’s not clear whether this means verification or approval process.

Musk has revealed that he is currently in talks with investors to raise funds for the Twitter acquisition. He also revealed that he has raised $7.1 billion in equity commitments from Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Qatar Holding.

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