American billionaire Elon Musk has threatened to pull out from the $44 billion twitter buyout, accusing the organization of hiding information of bot and spam accounts on the app.
In a letter signed and released by Musk through his lawyers, accused Twitter of refusing to hand over important data to them so as to allow him vet the organization’s user base and other vital information.
Twitter has long reported that about 5% of its users are bots.
Despite reaching a buy out agreement with Twitter ,Musk has always questioned the bot number provided and demands that he carries out his own personal verification before sealing the deal.
“Mr. Musk has made it clear that he does not believe the company’s lax testing methodologies are adequate so he must conduct his own analysis” to determine how many accounts are fake, lawyers representing Musk wrote in Monday’s letter. “The data he has requested is necessary to do so.”
The letter says that Twitter has “refused to provide the information that Mr. Musk has repeatedly requested since May 9, 2022.” Twitter has offered to explain its testing methodology to Musk, according to the letter, which calls is “tantamount to refusing” the data request.
According to the Musk, if Twitter does not hand over the data, he will consider it a “material breach” of the agreement and will walk out of the deal.
“Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company’s corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement,” the letter says. Musk reserves the right “not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” according to the letter.
Twitter shares fell 3% on Monday, to $38.83.
Last month, Musk said that the deal was “on hold” while he confirmed that the number of bots Twitter said were on the platform was accurate.