Twitter to Share Data at Heart of Musk Deal Dispute

Analysts have doubts about Elon Musk's notion of relying on subscriptions instead of ads at Twitter Britta Pedersen POOL/AFP/File
Analysts have doubts about Elon Musk's notion of relying on subscriptions instead of ads at Twitter Britta Pedersen POOL/AFP/File
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Twitter to Share Data at Heart of Musk Deal Dispute

Analysts have doubts about Elon Musk's notion of relying on subscriptions instead of ads at Twitter Britta Pedersen POOL/AFP/File
Analysts have doubts about Elon Musk's notion of relying on subscriptions instead of ads at Twitter Britta Pedersen POOL/AFP/File

Twitter will yield to Elon Musk's demand for internal data central to a standoff over his troubled $44 billion bid to buy the platform, US media reported on Wednesday.

The news comes just days after the Tesla chief threatened to back out of his deal to purchase Twitter, accusing it of failing to provide data on fake accounts, AFP said.

The Washington Post, New York Times and website Axios cited unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying Twitter's board decided to let Musk access its full "firehose" of internal data associated with the hundreds of millions of tweets posted daily at the service.

"This would end the major standoff between Musk and the board on this hot button issue which has paused the deal," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a tweet.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal has said that fewer than five percent of accounts active on any given day at Twitter are bots, but that analysis cannot be replicated externally due to the need to keep user data private.

About two dozen companies already pay to access the massive trove of internal Twitter data, which includes records of tweets along with information about accounts and devices used to fire them off, according to the Post.

Twitter declined to comment on the reports but has defended its responsiveness to Musk's requests, and vowed to complete the deal on the original terms.

The mercurial Musk agreed to buy Twitter in a $44 billion deal in late April.

Twitter's top legal officer has told employees that a special shareholder vote whether to approve the buyout deal could be held in late July or early August, according to Bloomberg.

Musk began making significant noise about fake accounts in mid-May, saying on Twitter he could walk away from the transaction if his concerns were not addressed.

Some observers have seen Musk's questioning of Twitter bots as a means to end the takeover process, or to pressure Twitter into lowering the price.

The potential for Musk to take Twitter private has stoked protest from critics who warn his stewardship will embolden hate groups and disinformation campaigns.

US securities regulators have also pressed Musk for an explanation of an apparent delay in reporting his Twitter stock buys.

Twitter shares finished the official trading day slightly above $40, significantly lower than the $54.20 Musk agreed to pay when he inked the purchase deal.


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OpenAI Abandons Plan to Become For-profit Company

'OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be,' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company's website. JOEL SAGET / AFP
'OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be,' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company's website. JOEL SAGET / AFP
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OpenAI Abandons Plan to Become For-profit Company

'OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be,' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company's website. JOEL SAGET / AFP
'OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be,' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company's website. JOEL SAGET / AFP

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Monday that the company behind ChatGPT will continue to be run as a nonprofit, abandoning a contested plan to convert into a for-profit organization.

The structural issue had become a significant point of contention for the artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer, with major investors pushing for the change to better secure their returns, AFP said.

AI safety advocates had expressed concerns about pursuing substantial profits from such powerful technology without the oversight of a nonprofit board of directors acting in society's interest rather than for shareholder profits.

"OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be," Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company's website.

"We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware," he added.

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 and later created a "capped" for-profit entity allowing limited profit-making to attract investors, with cloud computing giant Microsoft becoming the largest early backer.

This arrangement nearly collapsed in 2023 when the board unexpectedly fired Altman. Staff revolted, leading to Altman's reinstatement while those responsible for his dismissal departed.

Alarmed by the instability, investors demanded OpenAI transition to a more traditional for-profit structure within two years.

Under its initial reform plan revealed last year, OpenAI would have become an outright for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC), reassuring investors considering the tens of billions of dollars necessary to fulfill the company's ambitions.

Any status change, however, requires approval from state governments in California and Delaware, where the company is headquartered and registered, respectively.

The plan faced strong criticism from AI safety activists and co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company he left in 2018, claiming the proposal violated its founding philosophy.

In the revised plan, OpenAI's money-making arm will now be fully open to generate profits but, crucially, will remain under the nonprofit board's supervision.

"We believe this sets us up to continue to make rapid, safe progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone," Altman said.

SoftBank sign-off

OpenAI's major investors will likely have a say in this proposal, with Japanese investment giant SoftBank having made the change to being a for-profit a condition for their massive $30 billion investment announced on March 31.

In an official document, SoftBank stated its total investment could be reduced to $20 billion if OpenAI does not restructure into a for-profit entity by year-end.

The substantial cash injections are needed to cover OpenAI's colossal computing requirements to build increasingly energy-intensive and complex AI models.

The company's original vision did not contemplate "the needs for hundreds of billions of dollars of compute to train models and serve users," Altman said.

SoftBank's contribution in March represented the majority of the $40 billion raised in a funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, marking the largest capital-raising event ever for a startup.

The company, led by Altman, has become one of Silicon Valley's most successful startups, propelled to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, its generative AI chatbot.