According to a new report from Reuters, Elon Musk is reaching out to new investors in a effort to bolster the funding for his newly acquired social media platform, Twitter, as it struggles to monetize.
According to Reuters, Ross Gerber, President and CEO at Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management has said he was contacted by a representative for Musk, who was seeking to offer more shares, at the same price, $54.20, which Musk had paid to buy the company and take it private in October.
Meanwhile, news platform Semafor reported that Jared Birchall, the managing director of Elon Musk’s family office, was reaching out to other potential investors this week, citing two people with knowledge of the fundraising effort.
Musk did not respond to requests for comment, and Twitter can no longer be contacted since their communications office was laid off as part of the downsizing of staff Musk performed when he took over the company.
Despite massive staff cutbacks, the refusal to pay the rent on their current location, as well as an auction of company property, the social media platform is continuing to burn through cash. Revenues have slumped amid an advertiser pullback triggered by Musk’s public statements regarding his intention to loosen content moderation.
However Musk’s views on that have been rapidly evolving. He originally noted in a tweet that his commitment to freedom of speech was so strong he was allowing the Twitter account which tracked his private jet to remain, despite it being a safety risk to his family. However after a car carrying his toddler son was assaulted by what he asserted was a stalker, he proceeded to make “real-time location doxing” a violation of company policies, and he immediately banned the account tracking his jet. When a raft of reporters continued to post doxing Tweets, Musk also suspended all the reporter’s accounts.
In addition, he has made a raft of documents regarding Twitter’s past censorship or users available to reporters, who have documented an unusually close relationship between the federal government and federal law enforcement agencies, and the social media company, which one reporter noted acted like a “subsidiary” of the government.
Regardless, as advertisers have fled, Musk has had difficulty raising the revenue to pay the interest on the $13 billion debt he accrued purchasing the social media giant.
Earlier this week, Musk sold $3.5 billion in Tesla stock, which brought the total amount of stock in the electric automaker that he has sold this year to almost $40 billion.
Tesla meanwhile continues to decline, as investors increasingly fear the company’s CEO is distracted with his new social media project, and no longer focused on the business of producing and selling automobiles. On Friday Tesla posted its worst weekly loss since March of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began in earnest.
