Twitter on Monday conceded and finally accepted an offer by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media giant in a transaction worth $44 billion.

The deal is for $54.20 per share in cash. Upon completion of the transaction sometime later this year, Twitter will become a privately held company.

Elon Musk

Earlier this month, Twitter’s board adopted a “poison pill” to guard itself from Musk’s original cash offer. Shortly thereafter, Musk said he would consider a hostile bid. He tweeted, “It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote.”

The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1. That was the last trading day before Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.

Twitter’s board of directors unanimously approved the acquisition.

‘Best Path Forward’ for Twitter Stockholders

Bret Taylor is Twitter’s independent board chair.

Twitter’s Bret Taylor

“The Twitter board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty and financing,” he said. “The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”

Musk secured $25.5 billion in financing. In addition, he’s providing a $21 billion equity commitment. There are no financing conditions to the closing of the transaction.

“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,” Musk said. “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. Twitter has tremendous potential. I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

Ron Bradley is vice president of Shared Assessments.

“With the human element being the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain, I applaud the intent to enhance authentication on the Twitter platform,” he said. “This change can’t come soon enough and will greatly impact spam bots and other modes of false information.”