Battle over bots reportedly threatens Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

The battle over bots on Twitter could upend Elon Musk’s takeover of the micro-blogging platform.

The billionaire and his team are no longer participating in “certain discussions around funding for the $44 billion deal, including with a party named as a likely backer,” according to an anonymous source cited by the Washington Post.

Twitter in April revealed that it had agreed to sell to Musk at a cost of $54.20 per share, but it’s been anything but smooth sailing in the weeks that have followed. Since mid-May, the Tesla CEO has repeatedly threatened to scrap the deal, claiming that Twitter has refused to give him an accurate tally of bots and fake accounts currently on the site.

Elon Musk is seen in 2020. (Susan Walsh/)

“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Musk previously said in a tweet. “Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”

In response, the social media platform vowed to provide Musk its data “fire hose” — a trove of data sold to corporate customers — but his team has said they have doubts about the figures provided by Twitter and do not have enough information to verify it.

A second source told the Post that the SpaceX founder as a result will likely “take potentially drastic action” to escape or adjust the deal, though they did not further elaborate.

Parag Agrawal, who took over Twitter’s chief executive role after co-found Jack Dorsey’s departure last fall, is ready to “come out fighting” should Musk continue his attempts to wriggle out of the deal.

“Parag wants to swing back more and is being more aggressive internally,” a former Twitter executive told Financial Times. “It seems Twitter is willing to go to war to make this deal happen.”

Shares of Twitter dropped by nearly 4% in the first hour of trading on Wall Street on Friday, with the price per share standing around $37.25.