The Block: Twitter shares jump as Elon Musk takes 9.2% stake in social media giant

Twitter stock surged in pre-market trading on Monday after Elon Musk revealed he'd taken a stake in the company, days after criticizing the social media giant for "failing to adhere to free speech principles."

The Tesla CEO has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter as of March 14 according to an SEC filing .

Twitter's share price has shot up from $39.31 to $49.06 — up 25% — in pre-market trading on the news.

This comes after Musk held discussions on Twitter about its algorithms and whether they should be open source. On March 24, he wrote , " I’m worried about de facto bias in “the Twitter algorithm” having a major effect on public discourse." He then tweeted a poll asking whether Twitter's algorithm should be open source.

At the time, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied , " The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone."

Musk has also had concerns about whether Twitter is maintaining free speech on its platform. On March 26, he asked if a new platform was needed. When another Twitter user asked he was considering building a new social media platform that would consist of an open-source algorithm and promote free speech, Musk replied that he was giving it serious thought.

Musk has also criticized Twitter's use of spending engineering resources on integrating NFTs as opposed to fixing other issues on its platform. " Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!? " he wrote , after it added NFT profile pictures.

He has also been critical of social media in general. In 2020, he tweeted, " Social media is a limbic amplifier, which inherently destabilizes civilization. "

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