Elon Musk shows up at Twitter HQ carrying kitchen sink as he closes in on $44bn purchase

‘Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!’ the Tesla boss tweeted

Elon Musk bizarrely showed up at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters carrying a kitchen sink as the Tesla boss closes in on his $44bn purchase of the social media platform.

“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” the world’s richest person tweeted with a video of him in the lobby of the building on Wednesday.

The closing of the long-running deal has not yet been made official and Mr Musk was given by a Delaware judge until Friday 28 October to complete it.

Twitter’s employees may not see the funny side though as Mr Musk has reportedly told bankers financing his deal that he intends on cutting staffing levels at the company by around 75 per cent.

“A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism – people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias,” Mr Musk also tweeted.

The world’s richest person renewed his attempt to buy the company earlier this month after trying to back out of the purchase.

Mr Musk agreed to buy the company for $54.20 a share in April, but by July had indicated that he had changed his mind, citing bot and spam issues.

Twitter then sued him in Delaware Chancery Court to force the deal to go through. In his letter to Twitter, Mr Musk agreed to pay the full price but said that was contingent on securing the necessary funding to pay it.

“The intention of the company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share,” Twitter said in a statement after receiving the letter.

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

If the deal goes through next Friday, Mr Musk would immediately become its new owner.

During Tesla’s quarterly earnings call last week, Mr Musk admitted that he was “obviously overpaying” for San Francisco-based Twitter.

But he said that he was “excited about the Twitter situation” and described the company as an asset with “incredible potential” that has “sort of languished for a long time.”

Mr Musk has suggested that buying Twitter is the first step in creating an “everything app” he calls X, which could be modelled after China’s WeChat.

He has also hinted that the platform will protect free speech and allow the return of banned users such as Donald Trump, whose account was locked after the January 6 insurrection by his supporters.