Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter is now on hold, according to the Tesla CEO.
On Friday, Musk tweeted that his planned purchase on Twitter is "temporarily on hold pending details supporting" a calculation that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5 percent of users on the platform. He linked to a Reuters report, which said Twitter provided this estimate in a recent filing.
Twitter's stock quickly took a hit after Musk's announcement, which he followed up by saying he is "still committed" to the acquisition. Last month, Musk said spambots were the "single most annoying problem on Twitter," and he vowed, "if our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!"
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The social media company in April accepted Musk's offer to purchase it for about $44 billion, $54.20 per share, but the deal still hasn't officially been completed.
According to The New York Times, some analysts saw Musk's tweet as an attempt to drive down the price of his Twitter purchase or set the stage to actually back out of it. "Many will view this as Musk using this Twitter filing/spam accounts as a way to get out of this deal in a vastly changing market," Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said, while CNN commentator Catherine Rampell suggested his concern over spam accounts could be a "cover story for other reasons to put the deal on hold or try to renegotiate it."
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