A “free speech absolutist”, Musk has long had a love-hate relationship with the platform. He has accused it of caving to censorship, while also tweeting more than nine times a day on average in 2021.
Here’s a look at Musk’s special relationship with Twitter through numbers.
73.5 million
The number of Twitter shares Musk owns, or nearly four times as many as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who has a 2.25% stake.
$2.89 billion
The value of Musk’s stake at Twitter’s closing share price on Friday, April 1.
27%
The jump in Twitter’s stock price – its biggest-ever one-day gain – after he disclosed his stake the following Monday.
$784 million
How much the rally earned Musk on paper that day, increasing the value of his Twitter stake to $3.7 billion.
$108.6 million
Twitter’s net profit from 2019 to 2021.
The proportion of Musk’s net worth – $268 billion – that $3.7 billion represents.
80,700,375
The number of Twitter followers Musk has (as of April 7, 2022), making him the platform’s 10th most popular user.
3,367
The number of times Musk tweeted in 2020, his busiest year on Twitter so far. Since it was a leap year, that works out to 9.2 tweets a day.
446
The number of tweets he posted in July 2020, his busiest month on Twitter so far. That’s more than 14 tweets a day.
2010
The year Musk posted his first tweet. Before that, someone pretending to be him had been using the @elonmusk handle. The imposter didn’t gain much traction and Musk cleared the air with his debut tweet on June 4, 2010. He didn’t tweet again until the end of 2011.
Sources: Visual Capitalist, Statista, WSJ, FT, The Guardian
Written by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
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Tata Digital unveils super app Neu at last
After several delays, Tata Group finally launched its much-awaited super app Tata Neu for the public on Thursday. “Tata Neu is an exciting platform that gathers all our brands into one powerful app,” Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran said in a LinkedIn post, “Combining our traditional consumer-first approach with the modern ethos of technology, it is an all-new way to discover the wonderful world of Tata.”
Earlier, Tata Digital had started testing online payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on Tata Neu. The test was conducted with a closed user group in partnership with ICICI Bank, sources said.
Tata Digital snags top ecomm execs: Tata Digital, led by its president Mukesh Bansal, who previously cofounded Myntra and also runs Curefit (now rebranded as Cultfit) has quietly been making key hires in the ecommerce arm of Tata Group.
From the crypto world
Coinbase launch brings UPI use for crypto under lens
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Crypto exchanges look to institutional investors, college students as volumes fall: Crypto exchanges are hoping to rope in everyone from large institutional investors to college students to stem the drastic drop in daily trading volumes.
From the IT space
As many as 50,000 IT jobs may temporarily shift to India as Ukraine burns
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Elevation Capital raises its largest India fund at $670 million
(From left) Elevation Capital’s Mayank Khanduja, Mridul Arora, Ravi Adusumalli, Mukul Arora and Deepak Gaur
Elevation Capital, the early-stage investor that has backed startups such as Swiggy, Paytm, Urban Company and Meesho, has closed its eighth India-dedicated fund at $670 million, its largest ever corpus.
This comes amid signs of a funding slowdown and overall macro headwinds hurting technology investments and valuations globally.
What’s the plan? Elevation, known for having kept its fund at the $300-400 million mark even as peers raised much bigger funds over the last few years, said it was now at an inflection point. It will continue to only invest in India, even as most of the bigger VC funds have diversified into Southeast Asia.
It closed around 30 deals last year and will continue to write cheques of $2 million to $5 million during the early stages with capital commitments going all the way up to $25 million during the lifecycle of a startup.
ETtech Deals Digest
DailyHunt parent VerSe Innovation, shopping rewards app Fetch Rewards, and Nord Security were among the startups that raised funds this week. Here’s a look at the top funding deals of the week.
■ Omnivore, an agritech venture capital firm, said it is setting up a new $130 million (Rs 1000 crore) fund to be invested in early-stage technology-driven startups focussing on agriculture, food, climate change and rural development.
■ Deep-tech and enterprise technologies focused investment firm Speciale Invest has raised Rs 286 crore towards the final close of its second fund.
■ Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Rattle has raised $26 million in a funding round, led by New York-based venture capital firm Insight Partners, and participation from Global Ventures and existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed India Partners
Quick commerce scores big during IPL
As the Indian Premier League grips the nation this year, quick commerce startups are looking to capitalise on the cricketing fever with the likes of Zepto and Swiggy Instamart recording an almost 40% spike in orders during match hours.
Curated by Judy Franko in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
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