Elon Musk → Twitter
A $44bn take-private of Twitter by Elon Musk personally, agreed in April 2022, disowned by the buyer within three months and completed in October only because the company sued in Delaware to hold him to the contract.
The largest technology take-private on record, completed only after Twitter sued to enforce the agreement.
- Value
- $44B
- Announced
- April 2022
- Completed
- October 2022
- Sector
- Technology
- Deal type
- take-private
- Acquirer
- Elon Musk (United States)
- Target
- Twitter (United States)
Why it mattered
Musk began buying Twitter shares in January 2022, disclosed a stake of more than 9% on 4 April and on 14 April made an unsolicited offer of $54.20 a share in cash. The board adopted a poison pill, but within a week Musk had lined up financing — $13bn of debt to be borrowed by Twitter itself from banks led by Morgan Stanley, plus loans against his Tesla shares and his own cash — and on 25 April the board unanimously accepted the $44bn offer.
In May Musk put the deal "on hold" over the number of spam accounts, and on 8 July he gave notice that he was terminating it, claiming Twitter was in material breach. Twitter sued him in the Delaware Court of Chancery to force the purchase through, and judge Kathaleen McCormick set an October trial. With his team doubtful that it could prove a material adverse effect, Musk offered on 3 October to close at the original price, and the deal completed on 27 October. He fired the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the same day and later laid off about half the staff.
What it left behind
The banks could not sell the $13bn of loans, which cost about $1bn a year in interest and fees; the Wall Street Journal later called it their worst merger-finance deal since the 2008 crisis. A year on, Musk valued the company at $19bn, and the service was renamed X in July 2023. The rescue came through his other companies: in March 2025 his AI start-up xAI bought X in an all-stock deal at $33bn, or $45bn with its $12bn of debt; by April the banks had sold the last of the loans at about 98 cents on the dollar; and in February 2026 SpaceX bought xAI, X included, at a $250bn valuation. The litigation outlived the company. The SEC sued Musk in January 2025 over how he disclosed his initial stake, and in March 2026 a San Francisco jury found he had misled Twitter shareholders in two tweets, a verdict his lawyers said they would appeal. The case is the reference point for how firmly a signed merger agreement binds a buyer who changes his mind: once the target was ready to go to trial, the only way out was the full price.