How will Elon Musk pay for Twitter?

STORY: Billionaire Elon Musk has until the end of October to figure out how to finance a $44 billion takeover of Twitter.

Date: August 29, 2022

"I guess we're talking about Twitter?”

But - how is he going to pay for it?

The erratic entrepreneur said he'd buy Twitter at the share price agreed to in April - as long as debt financing comes through.

It marked a U-turn for Musk, who had spent months in litigation with the social media platform trying to get out of the deal.

Among other things, Musk claimed Twitter misrepresented the number of real users on the platform.

Date: May 2, 2022

"We have to get rid of the bots and trolls and the scams and everything because that's obviously diminishing the user experience. We're definitely on the warpath so I if somebody is operating a bot and troll army then I'm definitely their enemy. Just to be clear."

Banks including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America say they'll loan him 13 billion.

Musk will also commit nearly 10 percent of his stake in Twitter which is worth 4 billion.

Equity investors like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal are set to chip in 7 billion.

But when you factor in Twitter's price tag plus closing costs, Musk is still more than 22 billion short.

Forbes says his net worth is $219 billion - making him the world's richest person.

But a lot of that money is tied up in Tesla and Space X.

Musk has about 20 billion in cash after selling part of his Tesla stake in multiple transactions according to a Reuters calculation.

Even if all the financing stars align, Musk still needs as much as $3 billion.

He could sell down more of his stakes in Tesla or Space X.

Or he could get a bank loan against the stocks.

Or find more investors.

Musk has said he doesn't want to sell down his stake in Tesla any further, but given his big reversal on the Twitter deal, some worry he'll go down that road.

"The goal that I have should that, you know, everything come to fruition with Twitter, is to have a service that is broadly as inclusive as possible, where ideally most of America is on it."