Elon Musk Joins Twitter’s Board Of Directors Following Stock Buying Spree

Days after it was announced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter by acquiring 73.5 million shares of stock in the company, it was revealed by Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal that he will be joining the social media platform’s board of directors as well.

Agrawal, who took over from the site’s founder Jack Dorsey last year, said Musk would bring “great value” to the board because “he’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter.”

Musk had been posting several polls related to how users feel about Twitter, including one asking if Twitter “rigorously adheres,” to the principle of free speech, and a recent one where Musk floated the long-discussed idea of an “edit” button for tweets. It remains to be seen what Musk wants with this new position on the Twitter board in the early days. Polls are an easy way to test the waters when his account has over 80 million followers.

Musk has had issues with the SEC in relation to his Twitter account before. They slapped him and Tesla each with a $20 million fine when Musk tweeted out, “considering making Tesla private at $420” per share. He has continuously complained about oversight of his account since that incident because the SEC made it necessary for Tesla lawyers to review his Tweets. They even upheld their ruling as recently as late March, angering Musk further.

Along with Tesla, Musk is currently leading SpaceX. He also founded The Boring Company, which is attempting to execute his loop travel concept, and speculative neurotechnology company Neuralink, which is attempting to create a brain chip able to be implanted in humans, something the scientific community has had a mixed reaction to.