In the latest development of Elon Musk vs. Twitter, the mogul said that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is back on if the social media company can confirm how it determines bot account activity on the platform.
Last month, Musk announced that he was pulling out of the deal he struck in April, prompting Twitter to sue. Musk had claimed in an SEC filing that the company had failed to disclose information about the number of spam users and fake accounts it hosts. A Delaware judge has set a trial date for October, which Musk tried unsuccessfully to push back.
“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk wrote. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
According to regulatory filings from Twitter, the platform has kept bot activity down to below 5% of all accounts since 2013. After announcing that the takeover was “temporarily on hold,” Musk tweeted that he and his team would conduct a “random sample” of 100 followers of the @twitter handle to test that statistic.
On Aug. 4, Twitter chairman Bret Taylor shared that the company had filed a response to Musk’s countersuit.
“His claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant,” Taylor tweeted. “We look forward to the trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”
