Musk hints at paying less for Twitter than his $44B offer

FILE - Part of the Twitter page of Elon Musk is seen on the screen of a computer in Sausalito, Calif., on Monday, April 25, 2022. The Tesla CEO gave the strongest hint yet Monday, May 16, 2022, that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his $44 billion offer made the previous month. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave the strongest hint yet Monday that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his $44 billion offer made last month.

Musk told a Miami technology conference that a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to a report by Bloomberg News, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.

Also at the All In Summit, Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to the report.

The appearance came a few hours after Musk began trolling Twitter CEO Paraj Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

In all, the day’s events bolstered theories from analysts that Musk either wants out of the deal or is seeking a lower price, largely due to a huge decline in value of Tesla stock, some of which he has pledged to finance the Twitter acquisition.

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