Elon Musk, CEO of electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA), offered to buy social media company Twitter (TWTR) for about $43 billion in cash.
The offer of $54.20 a share is a 38% premium over the price of the stock the day before Musk's investment in the company was made public earlier this month, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk plans to take the company private in order to "go through the changes that need to be made," he wrote in a text to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor replicated in the filing.
In late March, Musk criticized the social media platform for failing to adhere to principles of free speech, saying that it serves as "de facto public town square" and this failure therefore undermines democracy.