Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised to “defeat the spam bots” or “die trying” if the bid to take over social media major Twitter succeeds. Musk further wrote on Twitter that all “real humans” will be authenticated if the bid succeeds.
The Tesla CEO last week announced an offer to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion. Later, Twitter’s board had adopted a “poison pill” defense that could make the takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.
Musk on Thursday informed US regulators that he had secured about $46.5 billion in debt and equity financing to buy Twitter and is planning on taking his offer directly to shareholders, starting a tender offer for its shares.
“To finance the Proposed Transaction or a Potential Offer, entities related to the Reporting Person (Musk) have received commitment letters committing to provide an aggregate of approximately $46.5 billion,” the SEC filing read.
Musk himself has committed to bringing $33.5 billion to the table including $21 billion of equity and $12.5 billion of margin loans against some of his Tesla shares to finance the transaction.