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- Elon Musk bought Twitter in October and he's still trying to decide if it was worth the money.
- Musk told Fox News it "remains to be seen" if his acquisition was financially sound, but it "currently isn't."
- "I bought it for at least twice as much as it should've been bought for," he said.
Elon Musk is on the fence about whether his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last year was a sound financial decision.
In an interview that aired Monday night on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Musk said, "It remains to be seen as to whether this was financially smart. Currently it isn't."
"We just revalued the company at less than half the acquisition price," he continued, appearing to confirm previous reports that stock grants to employees were based on a $20 billion valuation. "I bought it for at least twice as much as it should've been bought for."
"I must be a real genius here, my timing is amazing," he said sarcastically while alluding to the exodus of advertisers from Twitter after his takeover. Research center Media Matters said half of the platform's top 100 advertisers left in Musk's first 25 days at the helm. The Wall Street Journal reported that, as advertisers fled, Twitter's revenue and adjusted profits both fell roughly 40% in December compared to the same month in 2021.
Musk has frequently said one of his priorities for Twitter is maintaining freedom of speech. He said in the interview that the monetary cost of Twitter is "a secondary issue compared to ensuring the strength of democracy." Though Musk has referred to himself as a "free speech absolutist," he has fired employees who disagree with him and threatened to sue over critical coverage.
Musk said elsewhere in the interview that he wants to build something he calls TruthGPT, which he describes as "a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe." The name is an apparent reference to ChatGPT, the viral AI chatbot built by OpenAI. Musk cofounded the company but has since departed.