Who are Twitter's top investors after Elon Musk bought the company?

Twitter has a new line-up of top investors following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

Mr Musk's purchase came with the help of Wall Street bank loans and shareholders who agreed to roll over their interest in exchange for a stake of the new private company.

The richest man in the world has become the sole director of Twitter as a result of the takeover and has also appointed himself as its chief executive.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

Having praised Mr Musk back in May for his plan to buy Twitter, Saudi Arabia's Prince Al Waleed bin Talal last week addressed his “dear friend Chief Twit”, as Mr Musk titled himself on the social media platform, along with a statement from Kingdom Holding Company.

“Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) and the private office of His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (PO) announce the rollover of their ownership of the existing Twitter shares (34,948,975 shares) valued at US$1.89 billion to the 'new Twitter, led by Elon Musk, KHC & PO are jointly the second largest investor after Elon Musk,” the statement said.

“This deal is in line with the long-term investment strategy for which Kingdom Holding Company is known for.”

Prince Alwaleed's tweet and statement was backed by a regulatory filing.

Jack Dorsey

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has a little more than 18 million shares following Mr Musk's acquisition, a filing on the US Securities Exchange showed.

“As of the Reporting Event Time, Mr Dorsey beneficially owned an aggregate of 18,042,428 shares of Common Stock, which consisted of (i) 15,704,901 shares held of record by Mr Dorsey, Trustee of The Jack Dorsey Revocable Trust u/a/d 12/08/2010 and (ii) 2,337,527 shares held of record by the Dorsey LLC, the sole manager of which is Jack Dorsey, and the sole member of which is The Jack Dorsey Remainder Trust #3 u/a/d 6/23/2010, as decanted,” the filing stated.

It added that Mr Dorsey's holding “represented 2.4 per cent of the Issuer’s outstanding shares of Common Stock”. It is worth about $978m at the merger price.

Mr Dorsey, who founded Twitter in March 2006, left the chief executive position in November last year to focus on Block — formerly known as Square — a California-based financial services and digital payments company.

He stepped down from Twitter’s board of directors in May.

Qatar Investment Authority

An SEC filing on October 27 confirmed that the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, had contributed $375m in exchange for shares of Mr Musk’s holding company.

Binance

The head of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which invested $500m in Mr Musk’s Twitter takeover, said he had a number of reasons for supporting the deal, including the possibility Mr Musk would transition Twitter into a company supporting cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision as the next generation of the internet.

“We want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “And there are more tactical things, like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready.”

Agencies contributed to this report

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