Elon Musk open to acquiring Silicon Valley Bank

Billionaire Elon Musk said he was prepared to consider the possibility of acquiring Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which had been closed by authorities.

I’m open to the idea

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2023

The tweet came in response to a proposal by Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan to have Twitter acquire SVB and turn it into a digital bank.

“I’m open to this idea,” Musk wrote.

In March at a Morgan Stanley conference, Twitter chief said he wanted to create “a very powerful financial experience” that would be even better than the payments giant PayPal.

“You want to be able to send money from Twitter to another account with a single click. You want to earn interest,” the billionaire said.

On Friday, March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed SVB due to “a lack of liquidity and insolvency” and handed it over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

According to the FDIC, as of December 31, 2022, SVB’s total assets stood at about $209 billion, and total deposits were around $175.4 billion.

SVB is a preferred bank for a broad range of technology startups in the United States. The company serves more than 2,600 fintech sector clients.

On March 9, SVB shares fell more than 60%, and its market capitalization declined by $10 billion after it announced an offering of nearly all of its securities worth $1.75 billion. Additionally, venture firm General Atlantic bought a stake in the bank worth $500 million.

In the wake of SVB’s collapse, the stablecoin USDC and the algorithmic “stablecoins” DAI and FRAX lost their peg to the U.S. dollar.