Elon Musk started buying Twitter shares soon after Parag Agrawal refused to ban an account tracking his private jet, book says
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- Elon Musk complained to ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal about an account tracking his private jet, a new book says.
- An excerpt from Kurt Wagner's “Battle for the Bird” says Agrawal refused to ban the account.
- Wagner says Musk started building a stake in Twitter after Agrawal rejected his request.
Elon Musk might have decided to make a move on Twitter after Parag Agrawal rebuffed his request to ban an account tracking his private jet.
According to a new book about his acquisition of Twitter, Musk complained to the then-Twitter CEO about the account and asked to have it removed, but Agrawal refused his request.
In an excerpt from “Battle for the Bird” shared with Bloomberg, the author Kurt Wagner wrote: “Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane; the billionaire started buying Twitter shares shortly after Agrawal denied his request.”
Wagner said in a post on X that Musk complained to Agrawal about the @ElonJet account in January 2022, and later that month started buying shares in Twitter. Musk became its biggest shareholder by April after building up a 9.2% stake.
That same month he offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share, valuing it at about $44 billion. The deal wasn't finalized until October following a series of dramatic events.
Days after the acquisition was completed, Musk wrote in a post that he wouldn’t ban the account following his jet “even though that is a direct personal safety risk” because of his “commitment to free speech.”
However, a month later the account did get banned. College student Jack Sweeney who ran the account, told Business Insider at the time: "I really didn't think he'd suspend my personal account."
Sweeney then moved over to Meta’s Threads app after it launched last July, using the handle @ElonMusksJet, which now has more than 167,000 followers. He also runs the account @ElonJetNextDay on X, which tracks and posts about Musk's jet 24 hours after its movements.
Kurt Wagner's “Battle for the Bird” is published on February 20.
Musk and Agrawal didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.