The billionaire last month said he was terminating the agreement to buy the social network where he has more than 102 million followers and take it private, claiming Twitter has made “misleading representations” over the number of spam bots on the service. Twitter has since sued to force Musk to consummate the deal, and a trial in the Delaware Chancery Court has been set for October.

In May, Musk dropped plans to partially fund the purchase with a margin loan tied to his Tesla stake and increased the size of the equity component to $US33.5 billion. He had previously announced that he secured $US7.1 billion of equity commitments from investors including billionaire Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital and Binance. In his tweets late on Tuesday, Musk said the stock sale was also to contingency for if those private investors don’t come through.

At the weekend, Musk tweeted that if Twitter provided its method of sampling accounts to determine the number of bots and how they are confirmed to be real, “the deal should proceed on original terms.”

The Twitter deal included a provision that if it fell apart, the party breaking the agreement would pay a termination fee of $US1 billion, under certain circumstances. Legal experts have debated whether the conflict over spam bots is enough to allow Musk to walk away from the deal.

Musk, 51, has now sold around $US32 billion worth of stock in Tesla over the past 10 months. The disposals started in November after he polled Twitter users on whether he should trim his stake in the platform, kicking off the rollercoaster ride that’s stunned even the most seasoned Musk watchers. He now owns 14.84 per cent of Tesla, leaving him still by far the largest stakeholder.

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Commenting before Musk’s tweets clarifying the reason for the sale, Gene Munster, managing partner of Loup Ventures, said he put the odds of the tycoon buying Twitter at 75 per cent.

“I’m shocked,” Munster said. “This is going to be a headwind for Tesla in the near term. In the long term, all that matters is deliveries and gross margin.”

Musk’s $US250.2 billion fortune is the world’s largest, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but his wealth has fallen around $US20 billion this year as Tesla shares declined.

The carmaker’s shareholders approved a three-for-one stock split last week, a move designed to attract an even larger number of retail investors given the shares’ recent rebound. Tesla’s better-than-expected second-quarter earnings have been a tailwind, along with landmark US climate change legislation that aims to boost the use of clean energy through a series of tax incentives.

Bloomberg

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