The Tesla CEO ultimately gave up on the borrowing plan and contributed more cash. In the end, Musk sold roughly $15.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla in two waves, in April and in August. In the end, the 51-year-old would personally pay the transaction a little over $27 billion in cash.

As part of the agreement, Larry Ellison, the co-founder of the software business Oracle, wrote a $1 billion cheque in addition to the $5.2 billion from investment organisations and other sizable funds.

The Qatar Investment Authority, which controls Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, Qatar Holding, has also contributed money. The almost 35 million shares Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal already owned were transferred to Musk. The contributors will receive shares of Twitter in return for their investments.

About $13 billion of the remaining funds are secured by bank loans, including those from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho, Barclays, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas in France.

Morgan Stanley alone has contributed nearly $3.5 billion, according to data submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Twitter will be responsible for the financial obligation to repay these debts, not Musk personally. Twitter has guaranteed these loans.

Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, has an estimated net worth of $220 billion. It is interesting to note that he already controls 9.6% of Twitter's market share.

Given that Twitter has so far been unable to produce a profit and has run a deficit through the first half of 2022, the debt resulting from the acquisition may further strain the company's already perilous financial situation.

(With agency inputs)