WILMINGTON, Del. (NewsNation) — Twitter sued Elon Musk on Tuesday for violating the $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform and asked a Delaware court to order him to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share, according to a court filing.
Twitter could have instead pushed for a $1 billion breakup fee — which Musk agreed to pay under the deal.
The Tesla CEO had previously threatened to walk away from the deal if the company couldn’t show that less than 5% of its daily active users are automated spam accounts.
“Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months notwithstanding his repeated, detailed clarifications intended to simplify Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information sought in Mr. Musk’s original requests,” according to Musk’s attorneys.
Twitter removes 1 million spam accounts each day. the company said in a call with executives Thursday during a briefing that aimed to shed more light on the company’s fake and bot accounts as it tussled with Musk over “spam bots.”
Musk has argued that Twitter has significantly underestimated the number of these “spam bots” — automated accounts that typically promote scams and misinformation — on its service.
On Monday, Twitter lost 11.3%, in the first trading after Musk said he wanted out of the deal.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.