Elon Musk Will Purchase Twitter for Proposed $44 Billion After All — Report

Elon Musk has proposed to complete the $44 billion buyout of social media platform Twitter, as Bloomberg News reported.

Trading of Twitter shares were halted on October 4 following the report that Musk is moving ahead with the purchase on the original agreed-upon terms. Per anonymous sources via Bloomberg, Musk penned a letter to Twitter offering to confirm the deal at $54.20 per share price. Twitter or Musk have not publicly commented.

Twitter sued Musk earlier this year after the Tesla CEO backed out of the purchase offer in July. Musk exited the deal after Twitter allegedly could not prove that fake spam accounts and bots are less than five percent of active users. Musk’s attorneys cited former Twitter head of security Peiter Zatko’s claims of security deficiencies on the platform as reasoning to leave the deal on the table. Zatko’s severance payment and his counsel totaling $7.75 million allegedly also violated a provision of the acquisition agreement under which Twitter agreed to not “grant or provide any severance or termination payments or benefits” without first getting approval from Musk, per Musk’s lawyers.

Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk is scheduled to be heard in the Delaware Court of Chancery on October 17.

Following the Bloomberg report of Musk now buying Twitter, the stock prices rose over 18 percent before trading was halted at 12:13 p.m. ET.

Musk previously proposed authenticating all Twitter users and charging businesses to use the social media networking site.

At a TED Talk earlier this year, Musk said he hopes to make the proprietary algorithm “open source.” The Tesla executive later tweeted that “a social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”

Twitter shareholders and investors have voted in favor of Musk’s takeover.