10 May 2022

Elon Musk bets the farm: How the billionaire’s Twitter buy could blow back on Tesla

Benjamin Powers

Elon Musk may be the world’s richest man, but that doesn’t mean he has a lot of money.

With much of his wealth tied up in stock holdings, he’s financing his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in part by borrowing against his shares in Tesla — tying the fortunes of the carmaker, the main source of his wealth, to those of the volatile and barely profitable social media site.

Success would make the richest man who has ever lived richer still. Failure could increase the amount of Tesla stock he is leveraging, creating problems for both Musk and the car company. Despite Musk’s optimism, others have tried and failed to raise Twitter’s profits to match its outsized influence.

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