According to a report from Semafor, Sam Bankman-Fried, the embattled founder of FTX, owns a stake in Twitter worth roughly $100 million.
Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly owns a $100 million stake in Elon Musk’s Twitter
After midnight on May 5, just a few weeks after making his $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter, Musk phoned Tesla CEO Bankman-Fried to extend an invitation for him to convert his publicly traded Twitter shares into stock in Musk’s privately held business, according to the news source. According to Semafor, an FTX balance sheet from this month displays Twitter shares as an “illiquid” asset.
Musk’s text came after a message from Bankman-Fried, who expressed support for Musk’s intentions for Twitter and indicated he wouldn’t be able to make any additional investments in the company, according to Semafor. The publication reported that the founder of the cryptocurrency indicated he had roughly $100 million in stock that he could roll over into the deal.
Before the article was published, Insider contacted Twitter and FTX spokespeople for comment, but they did not answer. In September, during the pretrial discovery phase of Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for his attempts to back out of his purchase of the social app, several texts between Musk and Bankman-Fried referencing the Twitter takeover were made public. Twitter was suing Musk because of these attempts.
The FTX founder had pondered purchasing Twitter himself and would be willing to contribute as much as $8 billion to $15 billion to Musk’s purchase, according to Bankman-advisor Fried’s Will MacAskill, who had contacted Musk in March.
According to an earlier Axios article, the two men spoke over the phone, and Bankman-Fried later opted against funding the acquisition. Since then, Musk has criticized Bankman-Fried on Twitter numerous times. On Twitter Spaces earlier this month, Musk claimed that when he first met the creator of FTX, his “bullshit meter was redlining.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2022
“Man, everyone, including major investment banks — everyone was talking about him like he’s walking on water and has a zillion dollars, and that was not my impression,” Musk said. “That dude is just — there’s something wrong, and he does not have capital, and he will not come through. That was my prediction.”
FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to acquire emergency capital, and Musk made the remarks shortly after the news surfaced. According to Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO and lost 94% of his net worth that same day.
Not everyone rolls over their public shares, including Bankman-Fried. About $1 billion was invested into the private company by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
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