Elon Musk has built up a 9.2% stake in Twitter, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday.
Twitter shares jumped 26% in pre-market trading on the back of the news that the world’s richest person holds shares worth almost $3bn in the micro-blogging platform.
Musk, the maverick boss of Tesla and SpaceX who has an estimated $273bn (£208bn) fortune, owned 73,486,938 Twitter shares on 14 March according to the filing. Those shares were worth just under $2.9bn based on Friday’s closing price, but will now be worth about $3.6bn.
The news sent Twitter shares soaring about 25% in pre-market trading.
The Tesla founder bought 73,486,938 Twitter shares on 14 March, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stake is worth $2.89bn (£2.20bn), based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday.
The stake makes him one of the largest shareholders in the company and is more than four times the 2.25% holding of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
