Billionaire Elon Musk Offers a Deal to the World

Elon Musk is a billionaire who has become synonymous with eccentricity in business. A serial entrepreneur, he began his career as an adolescent at age 12 when he created a computer game and sold it to a magazine. He was born in South Africa and emigrated to Canada and the United States. He received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and founded early tech companies, including Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.

As CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, he oversees product design, engineering, and manufacturing. He’s made history with reusable rockets and vehicles designed to take humans to orbit and onto other planets. His other projects include the Boring Company, which aims to ease soul-crushing city congestion by building fast public transit tunnels. And as chairman and CEO of SolarCity, he’s expanding the reach of renewable energy. On Thursday, news broke that banks tapped to finance the Twitter acquisition had begun turning over cash into an escrow account. That could be a sign the deal is finally on track to close.

What Will the Deal Look Like?

The billionaire space entrepreneur is already one of the most famous people in the world and has been hailed by many as a hero. Now, he’s offering the chance to take over Twitter and make it even better.

The deal has many moving parts, from the price tag to whether or not regulators will approve it. It also has to be financed, which could be tricky. Twitter has made clear it wants the $46.5 billion Musk is committing in equity and debt financing to be used for its current business, and experts say banks would have a hard time walking away from commitments they’ve made.

The company could face scrutiny from U.S. national security agencies if it buys a technology that could be used for military purposes. And investors may worry that Musk’s repeated comments about Twitter fake accounts will damage the brand. The drama has already triggered some jitters in the stock market.

The South African-born entrepreneur has a high tolerance for risk, and his companies have reshaped industries and intersected with millions of consumers. But his recent move to buy Twitter, a terrestrial social-media platform, is not without its risks.

For one, it could damage his reputation. The tech billionaire has built a huge fan base for Tesla and SpaceX through his frequent online presence, and he’s cultivated a parallel media ecosystem that carries a positive spin on all of his activities. He has a similar following for tunnel-maker the Boring Company and brain-computer start-up Neuralink. He is also involved in several smaller projects, including a rocket-making venture called Starship. And he’s made it clear that he isn’t in business solely to make money.