Elon Musk Reaches Deal to Purchase Twitter in $44 Billion Buyout

Twitter announced Monday that it accepted Elon Musk‘s nearly $44 billion buyout deal. Under the terms of the deal, shareholders will receive $54.20 per share and once it’s finalized, the social media site will become a privately held company.

The deal was unanimously approved by Twitter’s board and is expected to close sometime this year.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement Monday. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

The agreement comes almost two weeks after Musk offered to buy the social network.