Sequoia, Binance and a16z Back Elon Musk's $44 Billion Twitter Bid (techcrunch.com) 100
A group of nearly two dozen investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firm Fidelity is backing Elon Musk's $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter. From a report: The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive said in a filing Thursday that he had raised over $7.1 billion in total from the investors. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison delivered the largest check, at $1 billion, the filing revealed. Sequoia has chipped in $800 million, VyCapital $700 million, Binance financed $500 million, and Andreessen Horowitz has invested $400 million, the amended 13D filing said.
Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is their motivation?
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The same motivation that moves all investors: potential profits.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter loses 200 million per year. Users never want to pay for anything on the site. Advertisers already avoid it, and touting free speech (aka letting all the right wing loonies back on), will only make them run away faster. Oh, and the 2 billion in interest per year the loans will demand in servicing.
Very curious to see how he gets this to make money, and not bleed everyone dry. Seems more like a money black hole.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
..free speech (aka letting all the right wing loonies back on)...
People with views like that that infected Twitter corporate culture is the main reason it was in decline.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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..free speech (aka letting all the right wing loonies back on)...
This is fascist. Controlling speech (no matter what kind of speech), under the color of authority is always, ALWAYS, a bad idea. It is fascist in nature and will lead to what the original advocate's intent was to be abused.
Re: Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:3)
Well, lucky for you, internet sites that moderate don't control the speech of their users. They control whether their own resources are used in furtherance of that speech.
If I go to protest something on the sidewalk, I don't get to steal poster materials or soapboxes or megaphones from people so that I can get my message out better. Maybe the people who own those things are kind enough to lend or donate them, but they are entitled to decide based on, among other things, what speech they're being asked to as
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So Ron DeSantis is a fascist? Good to know.
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Controlling speech (no matter what kind of speech), under the color of authority is always, ALWAYS, a bad idea.
So you're perfectly ok with standing in a packed cinema shouting "Fire!", correct? You down for coming to the street comer and shouting "n****r" at every PoC that walks by?
I didn't think so. No sane person supports that application of "free speech", so obviously there is some nuance involved, and there is the problem. My level of nuance is almost certainly different to yours, and different to the person over there. My view of Twitter a a cesspool of hate could well be your idea of a marketplace of ideas
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So you're perfectly ok with standing in a packed cinema shouting "Fire!", correct? You down for coming to the street comer and shouting "n****r" at every PoC that walks by?
Freedom of Speech is not freedom from consequence.
There is no prior restraint on your speech. You can do either of the above. There will be consequences if you do.
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It is fascist when a government does this. Twitter is a private company, it can make its own rules. Just like you are forbidden to write an editorial in my yearly Christmas newsletter.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever the "bad people" are there's no way to actually silence them without some seriously evil tyranny.* In modern society driving them off one platform just sends them to more isolated bubbles where they can get more extreme by feeding off each-other. The reason your ilk doesn't like free speech now is because the mainstream agrees with you. The government, the corporations, and most of the people in power are spouting YOUR ideology.
Well let me tell you that changes. Which way the mainstream pushes changes but restrictions on speech are forever. So keep pushing for this and next time you'll find your ideology the REAL underdog and the same restrictions, the ones you're pushing for, still in place. *silencing them IS tyranny, but that's a different topic.
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Some speech is objectively false.
Calling a circle a square is objectively false.
Saying trans people don't deserve to live is objectively false.
People who stick their fingers in their ears and continue spouting that bullshit after being proven wrong countless times are not helping.
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Some speech is objectively false.
True.
Calling a circle a square is objectively false.
True.
Saying trans people don't deserve to live is objectively false.
This is a matter of opinion, not objectively true (one I agree with, but it is not objectively true).
People who stick their fingers in their ears and continue spouting that bullshit after being proven wrong countless times are not helping.
To you. But they believe they are helping their cause.
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People who stick their fingers in their ears and continue spouting that bullshit after being proven wrong countless times are not helping.
Yeah, but giving someone the power to censor turns out to be even worse.
Because eventually the bullshit spouters will become the censors.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is a good thing. Unfettered free speech is a bad thing.
The point many miss is that free speech for free speech sake actually limits discourse - because there will always be people who thinks free speech means they are allowed disrupt others speech with their own speech. That behavior limits the speech of others because it drowns their speech out or drive them away.
Imagine if you will, you are sitting at a street-café sipping on a devils brew while having a debate with your friend about whether narwhals are aquatic unicorns or not. Suddenly a vegetant grasseater shows up lambasting you for talking about the poor animals in that way. This disruptive and loud person keeps up a running commentary how bad you are as persons and you find that your pleasant discourse has turned into something very unpleasant so you and your friend cut short your debate and leave the café. The next day you pass by the café and you see this person obnoxiously accosting other patrons and telling them how horrible they are for eating a salad because now some animal will starve. You find this disconcerting and it ruins your good mood for the second day and you decide then that you'll avoid that café in the future.
In what way does this scenario seem reasonable (or unreasonable for that matter)?
Was someone's speech silenced?
Is the café negatively impacted?
In what way does such a scenario improve free speech?
Should a person feel the need to change a venue because others doesn't understand discretion in their speech?
At what point is it acceptable to force your speech on others?
Is it okay to use speech to silence other peoples speech?
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Free Speech is a good thing, but one form of free speech is refusing to do business with Qanon crazies and people who railing against the woke-transsexual illegal-alien BLM menace. This exclusion isn't notably evil (in that everyone does it) nor is it tyrannical (because everyone can do it for the price of setting up a website). I support Twitter's kicking the RumbleGabParlerTruth crowd off and I support the right of these toxic and insane communities to suck each other off.
Musk allowing these views to be a
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Except that Twitter's revenue continues to climb.
Twitter has benefited from booting a few of the worst accounts off, and then having their fans follow them to Gab and Parler. They drained the swamp without it having any effect on 99.999% of users, which made Twitter a more pleasant place and improved the discourse, while simultaneously dumping that toxic waste on their competition's platforms.
Continued adoption by politicians has also helped, which is in no small part due to this clean up.
Re: Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yes pushing woke propaganda when conservative views traveled faster on their own.
But you won’t even bother reading the research paper.
https://cdn.cms-twdigitalasset... [cms-twdigitalassets.com]
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your thesis depends on absolutely nothing changing at Twitter, e.g. maintaining the status quo.
We already know that isn't going to happen. One of the ideas Musk floated publicly is to charge for tweet embeds, which I think is absolutely brilliant. Twitter publishes the content, but it's the media outlets such as NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Associated Press, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, NBC Universal Comcast, etc. that "report" on that content and create derivative works that sit behind paywalls that they make money from while paying Twitter nothing.
This is a revenue stream that is ripe for collecting on, without affecting Twitter users at all.
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How does he plan to make revenue from tweet embeds?
If he tries to charge the companies embedding tweets, they just won't embed tweets and instead write it as a quote with a link. They are nervous enough about embedding tweets as it is, given that they can be deleted and then their article is broken.
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Musk appears to have a poor understanding of copyright law. In this case, the idea is going to run squarely into the concept of fair use.
Charging for that is a terrible idea (Score:3)
It's a terrible idea and he's not going to do it. The actual people who run Twitter will sit him down and explain why it's a stupid idea and he'll back down from it.
What he's trying to do is say how he's gonna make money off a company that hasn't had a profit in 8 years in order to distract from the fact that he didn't buy Twi
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And I'm very curious as to the depths of delusion people will sink to in assuming what billionaires intentions are, before they realize Elon isn't really like most of them. Or you.
He, doesn't care about money. The corrupt society that he has to utilize to fulfill his dreams, does.
And he also cares quite a bit about Freedoms. Man could have done a hell of a lot more with 44 billion than this, to include not giving a damn as to the price society was paying, for allowing Shitter to represent the Town Squar
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>Users never want to pay for anything on the site.
does twitter sell anything other than useless Blue?
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There are also "Super Follows" where you can pay $3 a month and people can make exclusive tweets for only those people that sign up.
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They sell advertisements as sponsored tweets I have heard, though I have never directly used Twitter, only viewed through links or embeds, so I could be wrong.
One of Elon's proposals is to open up the blue check program to everyone, and sell it for $5/mo in order to remove the advertising.
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You don't see how Twitter could ever make money, and I don't see why people would ever use it. /shrug
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Meanwhile, shortly after the word came through that Elon Musk had reached a deal to buy Twitter, the left-wing political think tank Open Markets Institute tried to appeal to the FCC, the FTC, and the Justice Department to block it. Open Markets Institute is in part funded by George Soros.
That effort to block the deal hasn’t seemed to work. FCC commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington declared they wouldn’t block the deal. Simington said that not only wouldn’t it be bad, that it wou
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
> What is their motivation?
Money - duh!
Love him or hate him, Musk makes companies work. People have been shorting Tesla for years, and yet it keeps getting better and better. SpaceX likewise went from "the guy must be nuts - that'll never work" to "Hmm, these guys might replace a large chunk of Nasa". Starlink looks like it's going to be useful, and lots of people are rushing to keep up with him (by way of an endorsement)
FWIW, my impressions are that Twitter got itself into an internal (political) mess tripping over themselves over every little thing. Unwinding that probably isn't that hard, but it'll take some guts. It doesn't mean turning Twitter into a cesspool of hate either - nor does it really mean the likes of Trump will ever be welcome back there. There are a zillion ways Twitter could get better without becoming worse, so he's really only got to pick a few of them to make some money. If it were me, my first job would be to sort the UI design - it's like the ebay of social media at the moment, but he seems to be looking elsewhere and it'll be interesting to see how that works out for him.
Re: Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:1)
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On the other hand, The Boring Company and Solar City. He wasn't dumb enough to actually start a Hyperloop company, he let other people fail at that.
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I enjoy most of your commentary, but you have a blind spot with Elon Musk. Not that he's perfect, but:
The Boring Company is expanding. Their stuff is getting bought. They recently raised a significant chunk of money to be able to scale up faster.
(And you're also behind - they announced they're going to see if they can make a Hyperloop work.)
Solar City pivoted, and then essentially stood still while they were trying to figure out the tech. It looks like they still have some way to go but declaring them dead
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The tunnel they dug isn't working very well. Maybe Musk's reputation means he gets a second chance, but presumably the next one will be a very different design because the current one is completely half baked.
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What is their motivation?
One possible motivation is that they see Twitter as it existed before Musk as a threat to their core business. Now ask yourself why they would feel that way and why Musk's commitment to free speech is seen as necessary by these rich people that have everything else. Also, you might want to look what happened to fortunes of all Russian billionaires that made the opposite decision.
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Gut the IP, cut costs, run company into the ground, get rich, repeat.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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Amazon claimed losses for over a decade and look at them now.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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True but Twitter is growing which is key;
To put Twitter's user growth in perspective, since the height of the pandemic, sequential quarterly increases have ranged between 1 million and 7 million, after growing by 20 million daily active users in the second quarter of 2020. [reuters.com]
Daily active users on Twitter rose to 229 million in the first quarter ended March 31, from 199 million a year earlier. The average analyst expectation was 226.8 million.
This is what Musk is buying a large and growing userbase and most i
Re: Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:1)
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What is their motivation?
Why would I need to ask myself what motivates a cost saving enterprise to join a consortium to buy something? An average brain damaged end-of-career footballer can answer that off the top of their head.
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Because they want to own a piece of a private Twitter, giving them outsized influence in the Twitter board room in comparison to VCs and investment funds that don't.
Re:Now ask yourself: Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
W/ Binance it's probably to pay Musk back for all of the crypto market manipulation he did via Tweets in the last two years.
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What is their motivation?
Potential profits; Musk mentioned possibly taking Twitter public again in the future. Being a financing backer now would probably pay off well in that case...
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They miss 8chan and since Something Awful raised their price to $10 they can't afford it anymore.
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Binance is s crypto exchange. Backing the man who can single handedly pump up any coin he wants, for free, on twitter, is extremely profitable to them. After robinhood fucked up doge, a million screaming autistic nerds moved to binance, kraken, etc. Of course they'll back him.
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The same motivation that leads people with money buy newspaper at a loss : control on opinion
Smart move (Score:5, Insightful)
Since X.COM there's not been one business he's managed that hasn't been a successful for stakeholders. It's pretty much a no-brainer, they're buying the management not the collateral.
Is that it? (Score:2)
A tree, a pop singer, and something that sounds like one of Elon's children is supporting his bid? That's not impressing me.
This list mocks the peanut gallery (Score:2)
It makes a great mockery of the snowflakes losing their shit on Twitter / Wherever posting questions like "OMG if Musk had $44bn cash why doesn't he just end world hunger!!! *cry*"
When "someone" buys something for $44bn it's a good reminder that no, they aren't buying it. Musk isn't stupid. He wouldn't taken on an investment risk of that size without underwriters.
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This Chris Rock joke is about prenup agreements but it applies in this case.
Everybody needs a prenuptial agreement. People think you gotta be rich to get a prenup. Oh no! You got 20 million and your wife want 10, big deal! You ain’t starvin’. But if you make 30,000 and your wife want 15, you might have to kill her.
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"OMG if Musk had $44bn cash why doesn't he just end world hunger!!! *cry*"
That quote may be an exaggeration, but he possibly may have invested up to 6 billion into that problem as well.
https://www.abc10.com/article/... [abc10.com]
He had a public conversation with the head of the UN World Food Program where they discussed the actual cost of ending world hunger, then he had a donation of 6 billion shortly after that, though he did not confirm that is where the money went, they didn't challenge him on it after, so likely it went there.
From that article:
A February Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealed that Musk had donated Tesla stocks that were then-worth $5.7 billion to an unspecified charity in mid-to-late November, with the first donation coming a few days after Beasley and WFP published their plan.
Likely, that was him spending that money i
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Except like I said Musk is smart, smart enough to know that money isn't what is causing starvation, lack of food isn't what is causing starvation, politics and corruption is.
You can't solve that by throwing money at it. It's a fantasy that with a magic injection of $6bn there'd be no more hunger.
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That was pretty much what the conversation was.
Unfortunately, the UN is still approaching it the same way, by throwing free food at people. Instead, they need to teach people how to grow food, how to irrigate, etc. Also, as you said, working against government corruption that is causing the food shortages around the world, it seems mostly in Africa, but China and India both have their peasant classes that are barely given anything to eat.
Lower ranking chimps observe what high ranking (Score:5, Interesting)
Only a fool would bet against him (Score:2)
He has a perspective for potential that is unseen by others. Combine that with a wicked talent stack and a track record for success.
Binance? (Score:2)
WTF is Binance to do with it?
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They have money.
They want to invest.
They think it will result in a return on the investment.
That's all there is to it. What else do you want them to "do with it"?
Musk'll sell titter coins, stonks and tier speech (Score:3, Interesting)
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It would be rather funny if he did that.
Another funding source could be to see people subscriptions that give you a certain amount of blocks per month, so he would be making money off of the people who want to bubble chamber themselves by blocking all the voices that make them think outside their bubbles.
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Proofreading is king... missed that typo.
could be to sell people subscriptions
FTFmyself...
Smart move but choices will have to be made (Score:4, Insightful)
Big question mark was how much he was putting up versus loaning out:
As a result of the new investment, Musk said the margin loan of $12.5 billion he had received from Morgan Stanley and other banks has been cut to $6.25 billion. He also increased his total equity commitment to $27.25 billion.
That will definitely keep his interest payment on loans down to something more manageable and probably the case that these investors are going to be patient with whatever monetization plans he has for the platform.
Speculation but to me a side effect of this though is that he will have to step away from Tesla, at least as an active CEO. Owning and running Twitter is a volatile position and Tesla right now pretty much has it's plans laid out for the next decade at least. More factories, more batteries, more cars, more chargers and improving all those things. The revolutionary piece was just getting electric cars into the mainstream, everything now is just scaling and improvement. Self driving is neat and all but Tesla is hardly the only company working on it, it's going to happen with or without them.
Twitter, SpaceX, Neuralink, these companies need hands on and fast management. Tesla is publicly traded and needs stability and a measured hand. His style of direct management probably works best for when the companies are really pushing the envelope. Plus I know the guy is a workaholic but even then he's only got so much time and energy.
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He may be the richest person, but most of his money isn't liquid. He would need to sell eg. Tesla or SpaceX to pay for this. That's why 'tax the rich' is a stupid creed and wealth taxes don't work because most wealth is tied up and would need to be liquidated, destroying its value, nobody is swimming in coins like Scrooge McDuck.
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...nobody is swimming in coins like Scrooge McDuck.
Apple has $202.6 billion cash and cash equivalents, and that's after buying $81 billion of its own stock back last year.
Google is sitting on $169.2 billion in cash.
Microsoft is sitting on $132.3 billion in cash.
Amazon is sitting on $86.2 billion in cash.
General Electric is sitting on $67.9 billion in cash.
United Health Group is sitting on $67.0 billion in cash.
Meta Platforms (Facebook) is sitting on $54.8 billion in cash.
Pfizer is sitting on $51.3 billion in cash.
That's eight S&P 500 companies with the
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Cash in the bank? Highly unlikely, that would be very poor investment. If they did, why aren’t they buying Twitter? Apple has almost all of it via investments (their stores and factory build-outs are investments), they have $6B in debt, basically all their liquid cash flow (the way they pay their employees) is borrowed cash. So I’m assuming you just get talking points from some partisan hacks and not going to bother looking into any of the other companies, they all have the same problem, a lot o
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Cash in the bank? Highly unlikely, that would be very poor investment.
Cash and cash equivalents. You do know what that means, right? You do know that's a legal description they use in their quarterly statements, right? You do know it has a meaning at law, right? Here, LMGTFY [lmgtfy.app].
Yes, cash in a bank is part of it. A balance in an account. The rest is in "commercial paper, Treasury bills, and short-term government bonds with a maturity date of three months or less." Let me translate that for you, since you're apparently financially ignorant. Commercial paper is bonds issued
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It CAN be effectively liquidated, doesn't mean it's a good move to do so. If they're so cash-rich, why bother borrowing at all, you make no sense.
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It CAN be effectively liquidated, doesn't mean it's a good move to do so.
At the current rate of return in the bond market, it's always a good move to liquidate it if you want to pay billions in cash for something. It's being parked because they can't think of anything better to do with it. It's dead money.
If they're so cash-rich, why bother borrowing at all, you make no sense.
I don't have to make sense. I'm telling you how it is. This is reality. I told you why they borrow. It's for tax purposes. They are carrying debt because they can use it to finagle tax benefits for themselves which outweigh the cost of servicing the debt. The massively
Re:Why does he need this? (Score:4)
You don’t get rich by spending your own money.
Finally (Score:3)
All the social networks in billionaire hands.
The Planet beware.
Offtopic but Fun fact (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, we've probably got mod bots trolling our forum. It's the same criticism on the same kind of threads, so there's not a hell of a lot of other reasons why it would happen.
Try it and see. If you want to be critical of Mr M don't use their name. Also avoid mentioning the "B" word that indicates his total wealth, as it seems to trigger the bots too.
It's funny to think a forum as small as this attracts bots. But when you got that much money you can leave no stone unturned I guess.
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why does everyone pretend ? (Score:2)
this isn't about free speech, it's about money. always follow the money.
the question is does anyone really think twitter can make enough money to justify a 44B investment ? seems unlikely.
however, i can guarantee one thing, if Larry Ellison is involved the LAST thing this is about is free speech.
Musk doesn't give a shit about free speech, Musk gives a shit about Musk speech.
Ellison is the same way. He was a narcisstic fuckwit before it was cool.
Coming back to how they make money. I believe Fox news makes
What a step down (Score:4, Insightful)
1. If you focus on Tesla and it succeeds, you'll be known as the person who spear-headed the electrification of automobiles. In other words, you'll go down in the history books with your name next to "Henry Ford".
2. If you focus on SpaceX and actually deliver on your goal of establishing a human colony on Mars, history will consider you one of the most important humans to have lived in the last 1000 years. Nah. Make that 2000 years.
3. Getting involved in the flavor-of-the-year chat forum and a crypto exchange? This puts you in the same category as Mark Zuckerberg, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump.
Maybe I lack vision, but it seems to me that you're in a position to seriously impact the course of human history, but only if you stay on target. Is category 3 really worth it? You've only got a few more productive decades. I recommend that you use the time wisely.
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but only if you stay on target.
You sound like everyone complaining every single time Musk has entered a different venture. All of which have been successful. You can remove the word twitter and replace it with Space X and probably find your exact comment on Google search.
Maybe let's wait for him to actually start showing signs of being unable to manage his enterprises rather than what has actually happened: One success story after another.
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A shift in focus to twitter would be a massive step back down to ebay-level. Yawn. Any silicon valley bro can carry that ball. And even if he hits a home run with twitter and totally fixes it, it’s b
2008 Musk = Anakin, 2022 Musk = Darth Vader (Score:2)
Elon Musk is transforming from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. He’s forgotten how carbon credits, which were a gift from the left, got Tesla out of its darkest days. As did bailout money (which he paid back, but doesn’t change the fact he was given the money at the time he thought he needed it.) Nowadays he is so far gone to the right that he even seemingly pandered to climate change skeptics. He went from proclaiming himself a socialist as recently as 2016 to being a full-on right-wing extremi
Dark money is usually secret (Score:1)