Former Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey texted Elon Musk privately several times before the Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss attempted to buy the social media company.
Court records show Dorsey texted Musk on 26 March, more than two weeks before Musk's US$44bn offer for Twitter, saying “a new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. That’s why I left.”
Musk quickly responded by asking what it should look like, with Dorsey replying with a number of suggestions, such as an open-sourced protocol and not having an advertising model, currently central to the business model of social media companies.
Dorsey went on to say he had pushed for Musk to join the board of Twitter a year earlier, which was rejected.
When Musk joined the board after increasing his stake in Twitter to more than 9% on 5 April, he texted Dorsey to say it is time to “speak confidentially".
A few hours later, the two referenced the call, with Dorsey saying “he couldn’t be happier” with what Musk was doing and that he had “wanted it for a long time”.
On April 9, Musk texted Twitter chairman Bret Taylor about the idea of taking Twitter private to purchase the number of fake users.
Musk first sought to end his acquisition of Twitter in July this year, prompting Twitter to file a lawsuit against him. He later counter-sued, claiming the social media company breached its obligations under the acquisition agreement by misrepresenting the total number of fake and spam accounts.
Twitter has rebuffed Musk's claims of breaching the agreement and maintained that less than 5% of its users are spam and fake accounts.
Earlier this month, Musk filed his third termination notice against the social media company, which it called "invalid and wrongful" in an SEC filing.
The legal battle between Musk and Twitter is currently set to go to trial in the Delaware Courts on October 17, 2022.