Elon Musk teased an apparent interest in buying Silicon Valley Bank, though such aspirations seem to be little more than a tweet-level musing at this time. The original idea wasn’t Musk’s: Min-Liang Tan, CEO of gaming hardware giant Razer, pitched the notion. Musk’s response? “I’m open to the idea.”
I’m open to the idea
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2023
The opportunity comes at an interesting time for Musk’s other ventures. The Twitter CEO has made multiple attempts to build a new paid tier for the microblogging platform, with varying degrees of success. Adding a banking element to Twitter could bypass some of the concerns that have arisen since Musk’s takeover, creating a revenue stream without seriously impacting user confidence in the platform. There’s even some buy-in from outside the Twitter ecosystem. Mikael Pawlo, CEO of Swedish financier Bokio and a close observer of the SVB crisis, had this to say:
I think Twitter could use a financial leg. Would make total sense for the entire Musk ecosystem to buy the ruins of SVB and could also create a viable business model going forward for Twitter. ping @elonmusk
— Mikael Pawlo (@mpawlo) March 10, 2023
Thus far, this is nothing more than a conversation. If it develops into an actual strategy, however, it could have far-reaching effects on Twitter and global finance as a whole.
