Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to invest up to $1 billion in Elon Musk's Twitter despite other execs' advice, and didn't know if he still owned shares after the takeover
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- Elon Musk asked SBF if he wanted to help his $44 billion Twitter takeover, per Michael Lewis' biography.
- Bankman-Fried owned around $100 million of Twitter stock before Musk took the company private.
- After the takeover, he was unsure if he still had a stake, per the biography.
Sam Bankman-Fried didn't know whether he still owned shares in Twitter as Elon Musk took over the platform last year, according to Michael Lewis' biography of the FTX founder.
"Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon" details how Bankman-Fried sat down with Nishad Singh and Ramnik Arora to discuss backing Musk's acquisition in late April of last year.
Bankman-Fried already owned $100 million of shares in Twitter, although Lewis writes that Musk wanted "allies" to help back his $44 billion deal and gave him three hours to decide whether he would help.
According to Lewis, Bankman-Fried suggested investing between $250 million and $1 billion in Twitter. Singh asked if they could talk to Musk, and Bankman-Fried replied: "He's a weird dude," per the biography.
"It's not the dollar amount. It's about who's been nice to him and who hasn't," Bankman-Fried added.
Singh and Arora said that FTX shouldn't invest in Musk's Twitter, or only go with a small stake.
But then Bankman-Fried asked Morgan Stanley — which helped finance Musk's deal — if it would loan him $1 billion to invest in Twitter, using FTX shares as collateral, according to Lewis.
And he told one of Musk's financial advisors he would invest $5 billion if Twitter would be moved onto a blockchain, the biography says. But Musk refused, so Bankman-Fried lost interest and decided not to invest.
"Six months later, he wouldn't even know if he still owned $100 million worth of Twitter, or if the shares had been sold to Elon Musk," Lewis writes.
Semafor reported last November that Musk had texted SBF on May 5 to invite him to invest in Twitter, and that Bankman-Fried owned a "sizable chunk" of the post-takeover company. But Musk denied that Bankman-Fried or FTX had invested.
Bankman-Fried's spokesperson declined to comment.
Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.