Seems like Elon Musk can’t go a day without stealing a trending topic spot: after spending months going back and forth on his talked-about Twitter deal, Tesla’s head honcho has just reopened his offer to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share. That’s the same price he originally put forward back in April this year, and it values Twitter at around $44 billion. Investors were on board (once again): Twitter’s stock jumped 22% yesterday on the news, finishing up at $52.

Musk’s plan to buy Twitter first glitched back in July: an apparent bout of buyer’s remorse saw the world’s richest man scrap the deal over gripes with company management, as well as a damning theory about the true number of bots on the platform. Unsurprisingly, that didn't fly with Twitter, so the company was quick to take legal action against Musk in response. Now, the whole debacle could come to a swift end if Twitter warms up to Musk’s revived bid – if he has the money to pay for it, that is. See, not even Musk has that type of cash lying around: he only owns 9% ($4 billion) of Twitter’s shares today, so he’s reportedly sold $15 billion in Tesla stock, secured a $12.5 billion loan from a cohort of big banks, and lined up around $7 billion from co-investors to foot the remaining $40 billion bill.

There’s one big reason why Musk might cough up those megabucks: he recently tweeted – no surprise – that “buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”. There’s speculation that could look something like China’s WeChat – a one-stop-shop that puts the best bits of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Substack, and Uber into one sleek platform. And given Musk’s track record of building world-beating companies, he might well be up to the task of creating something worth watching….