The billionaire investor Bill Ackman's firm, Pershing Square, received special regulatory approval Sept. 29 for a new investment vessel whose purpose is to invest in private companies in order to take them public.
A few days later, he told The Wall Street Journal that he would "absolutely" consider such a transaction with Elon Musk's X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Ackman, who has around 800,000 followers on the platform, made a $10 million investment in Twitter through the Pershing Square Foundation when Musk acquired the platform last year.
Related: Why billionaire investor Bill Ackman is a Warren Buffett devotee
"The answer is I have a lot of respect for Musk. I think Twitter is a really important platform," Ackman told CNBC. "I think he's made tremendous improvements to the platform, and I think it's a unique, very difficult-to-disrupt, kind of asset and one that could grow."
The famed investor has not spoken with X or Musk about a potential deal to take Twitter public. He said he's not sure whether this is something Musk would even be interested in.
Musk purchased Twitter last year for $44 billion at the conclusion of a dramatic saga between him and the board and has since implemented a variety of updates to the platform, the most prominent of which changed the platform's iconic name and logo to "X."
He has also rolled out subscription services, both to the platform as a whole and to individual creators, and has emphasized video, audio and long-form text enhancements as he seeks to compete with other prominent media outlets.
Related: Twitter to X Corp: A complete timeline of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover
Ackman has a plan for X
Though Musk hasn't expressed any interest in working with Ackman to take X public, and despite the $13 billion in debt tacked to the company, Ackman has worked out a loose plan to make it happen, if Musk were interested.
"What's interesting here is we could commit $2 billion to a transaction, set the rights price to $121 million, set it at $100 a share and announce a transaction," he said.
"And then we tell the story and then the rights holders have a chance to decide whether to invest. As long as the rights have positive value, they're all going to get exercised and the IPO raises $13 billion."
Ackman said he's not sure how much X is valued at today. Musk himself has said on multiple occasions that he knowingly overpaid for Twitter due to the importance of the platform.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
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