Billionaires unite! Larry Ellison, Prince Alwaleed back Elon Musk's Twitter takeover

On April 25, Twitter officially accepted Elon Musk's offer to buy the social media giant for roughly $44 billion, at a $54.20-per-share exchange. Now, a new SEC filing, published Thursday, is showing the tech billionaire has a lot of support for his bid.

A well-funded Twitter takeover

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, existing Twitter shareholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia and crypto exchange platform Binance are among several investors that plan to show support for Musk’s much-publicized Twitter takeover.

The regulatory filing said Musk received “equity commitment letters …, providing for an aggregate of approximately $7.139 billion in new financing commitments” in connection with the Twitter deal.

This reduces the $12.5 billion margin loan the entrepreneur was awarded to acquire the social media giant to a mere $6.25 billion, with the takeover now to be financed by $27.25 billion in equity and cash.

How much is each supporter contributing?

Ellison, the biggest new backer, has committed $1 billion, while Binance is contributing $500 million. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz Alsaud has pledged to buy 34,948,975 shares, worth around $1.7 billion.

But that's not all. There are several other investment firms backing Musk’s bid including Qatar Holding, which has pledged $375 million, and Fidelity, which is contributing $316 million.

What does Musk plan to do with Twitter?

In a statement released on the date of his acquisition, Musk said the following:

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans."

In the past, the entrepreneur has made several suggestions for the platform. Time will tell how many of these come to fruition.