Elon Musk has denied that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried or FTX owns Twitter shares since Tesla’s CEO privatized the company and dismisses a recent report by Semafor.
On Tuesday, Semafor reported that Tesla CEO Bankman-Fried sent a message on May 5 inviting him to transfer his public Twitter stake into shares of privately held Musk’s company, weeks after Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
“As I said, neither I nor Twitter have taken any investment from SBF/FTX,” Musk tweeted Wednesday in response to Semafor and its editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. — Your article is a lie.
“He may own Twitter stock as a public company, but certainly not Twitter stock as a private company,” Musk said in a separate tweet.
Semafor reported that Musk’s May text followed an announcement by Bankman-Fried in which he expressed support for Musk’s plans for Twitter and said he could not invest any new money in Twitter. According to the report, the crypto founder added that he has a stash of around $100 million to transfer as part of the deal.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that FTX’s November 10 balance sheet listed Twitter stock as an “illiquid” asset.
Twitter and FTX officials did not respond to Insiders’ requests for comment prior to release.
Musk initially responded to Insider’s story about the Semaphore report in a tweet, calling it “false”. A person familiar with the deal also told Insider that saying SBF was involved on Twitter was “absolutely wrong”.
Musk also pointed out that Bankman-Fried is an investor in Semafor, the media outlet that reports Bankman-Fried is interested in Twitter.
The site’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, confirmed the investment. “Like you and many others, we received investment from him,” Smith said in response to Musk on Twitter. “We’ve been aggressively reporting on it and we bring it up every time we write about it, including here.
In a subsequent reply to Musk on Twitter on Wednesday, Smith posted a screenshot of what he said was a text conversation between Musk and Bankman-Fried: “Here’s a text message from @elonmusk telling SBF he’s on Order is” to go public with his stock. to Twitter Musk, as reported by Liz,” he said referring to Semaphore reporter Liz Hoffman.
A regulatory filing in May this year listed 18 investors who had pledged to invest in Musk’s personal Twitter, including rival FTX Binance and investors such as Sequoia and Fidelity. FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are not on the list.
Various communications between Musk and Bankman-Fried regarding the acquisition of Twitter came to light in early September during the pretrial of Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for his attempts to back away from purchasing the social app.
Bankman-Fried advisor Will McCaskill contacted Musk in March and said the FTX founder had been considering buying Twitter himself and was willing to contribute between $8 billion and $15 billion toward Musk’s acquisition.
The two men answered by phone, and Bankman-Fried later decided not to invest in the acquisition, Axios previously reported.
Since then, Musk has repeatedly criticized Bankman-Fried on Twitter. Earlier this month, Musk told Spaces on Twitter that his “bullshit meter was in the red” when he first met the FTX founder.
“Man, everyone including major investment banks — everyone was talking about him like he’s walking on water and has a zillion dollars, and that was not my impression,” Musk said. “That dude is just — there’s something wrong, and he does not have capital, and he will not come through. That was my prediction.”
Musk’s made the comments shortly after news broke on that FTX was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to secure emergency funding. Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO and lost 94% of his net worth the same day, per Bloomberg.
Bankman-Fried isn’t the only one to roll over his public shares. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey transferred about $1 billion into the private company.
Business insider published this news YESTERDAY but now we have elon-musk re-action on this news
