Elon Musk Wanted to Buy Substack After Twitter Purchase: Report [Video]

Elon Musk reportedly wanted to buy Substack after he purchased Twitter to combine the two sites.

The tech CEO proposed the acquisition of the blogging site during a phone call with Substack executive Chris Best in April 2023, a year after he took over Twitter, according to The New York Times.

Musk reportedly saw acquiring Substack, which relies heavily on subscription models, as a way to aid Twitter’s subscription service, which Musk was pushing heavily at the time in the form of Twitter Blue.

According to the report, Best declined any notion of an acquisition despite Musk offering him a chief executive position at the combined company. Not long after the conversation, Substack pivoted into politics.

Newsweek reached out to Substack via email and Elon Musk via Tesla for comment.

Twitter, now known as X after Musk’s rebrand, has often been billed as the “digital town square.” Musk himself has described his motivations for buying the site in …