The board of Twitter has agreed to a $44bn (£34.5bn) takeover offer from the billionaire Elon Musk.
Mr Musk, who made the shock bid less than two weeks ago, said Twitter had “tremendous potential” that he would unlock.
Why Elon Musk has been so keen to buy Twitter
Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated, Mr Musk said in a statement announcing the deal.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” he added.
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
What is Elon Musk’s record on Twitter?
Mr Musk, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, has a controversial history on the platform himself.
In 2018 US financial regulators accused him of misleading Tesla investors with his tweets, claims that were resolved in a $40bn settlement and that Mr Musk continues to deny. And in 2019 he was hit with a defamation suit – which he successfully defeated – after calling a diver involved in rescuing schoolboys in Thailand “pedo guy” on the platform.
On Monday, Mr Musk, who has been known to clash with journalists and block critics, suggested that he saw Twitter as a forum for debate. “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” he wrote just hours before the deal was announced.