The amended 13-D, filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed a $500 million commitment from Binance. Venture capital firm Sequoia pledged $800 million, Fidelity offered up $316 million and a16z allotted $400 million.
Total equity commitments listed in the filing amount to around $5.2 billion. Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, an existing investor, has also opted to retain 34.9 million shares, subject to certain conditions.
“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told The Block. “We hope to be able to play a role in bringing social media and web3 together and broadening the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
Musk is also set to take over as Twitter’s temporary CEO for a few months following the closure of the deal, sources told CNBC.
The move would temporarily unseat current CEO Parag Agrawal, who has been in place since November.
In April, the Tesla billionaire had agreed to pay $54.20 per share for Twitter. The transaction, which will make Twitter a privately held company, is expected to close sometime this year, pending approval from stockholders and regulators.
The announcement came four days after the billionaire unveiled a financing package to back the acquisition, which, Reuters reported, led Twitter’s board to take the offer more seriously.
Musk made the purchase with $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and an additional $21 billion equity commitment.
The Tesla CEO has previously said that, should his takeover succeed, he would open-source Twitter’s algorithm and try to make it an inclusive arena for free speech. He also said he would try to tackle spam and bot accounts.
The deal had led to speculation about how his involvement might change the makeup of ‘Crypto Twitter.’
UPDATE (9.40 ET): This story was amended to add detail about Musk’s potential stint as CEO.
