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Among the big winners in Elon Musk’s agreement to follow through with his deal to buy Twitter is an activist hedge fund based in a coastal Florida city that was just wrecked by Hurricane Ian.

Pentwater Capital, a 15-year-old firm with close to $5 billion in assets, bought a 2.4% stake in Twitter during the second quarter. The purchase of 18.1 million shares cost Pentwater roughly $725 million.

At $54.20, the price Musk has agreed to pay for Twitter, Pentwater’s stake would be worth about $980 million. The stock closed up 22% on Tuesday at $52, which is still below the acquisition price, signaling that Wall Street isn’t entirely convinced the deal will close.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Tuesday that he’d sent Twitter a letter informing the company of his intent to stick to the terms of the April agreement after previously trying to back out. The two sides were scheduled in court in two weeks, and part of Musk’s latest proposal involved putting an end to the litigation. Twitter has said it received the letter and intends to close the transaction at $54.20, but did not comment on the litigation.

When Pentwater jumped into Twitter, the social media company was in a holding pattern. The stock was languishing as Musk was putting out critical tweets about the company’s bot and spam problem, hinting at a sense of buyer’s remorse. The stock dropped as low as $32.55 on July 11, just after Musk officially tried to terminate the deal.

Pentwater was taking advantage of what the firm saw as a clear arbitrage opportunity. There was a signed contract on the table and a bunch of money to be made as long as the deal reached its logical conclusion.

“In my 23-year career doing this, I’ve never seen an acquirer walk away without any reason,” said Matthew Halbower, Pentwater’s founder, in an interview on Tuesday after Musk’s filing landed with the SEC. “The probability of him being able to walk away was very low.”

Halbower said the only two reasons that Musk would have to tear up the deal would be if there was fraud in Twitter’s financial statements or if there was a material event that changed the value of the company. Neither of those issues were at play, Halbower said.

Twitter hasn't done anything wrong in failed deal with Elon Musk, says major shareholder

Greenlight Capital also jumped in during the second quarter, paying an average of $37.24 for the stock. In an investor letter, Greenlight’s David Einhorn said there’s was $17 per share in upside rewards if the deal closed and an equal amount in losses if it collapsed.

“So we are getting 50-50 odds on something that should happen 95%+ of the time,” he wrote.

While Pentwater instantly made Twitter one of its top holdings when it purchased shares in the second quarter, the firm hedged its bet with a hefty investment in puts in case the stock dropped in value. So a portion of the gains from its equity investment will pay for the puts.

Pentwater has made other bets in and around the social media space. The firm is one of the top investors in Digital World Acquisition Corp., the special purpose acquisition company that’s been trying to take former President Donald Trump’s media company public, though the deal is being investigated by the SEC and the company recently missed a key deadline to hold onto $1 billion in funding. Trump’s app, Truth Social, was created after the ex-president was booted from Twitter following the events of Jan. 6.

Halbower said Pentwater has 44 employees, with just seven or so in its office in Naples, Florida. The firm also has locations near Chicago and in New York, Minneapolis and London.

The Naples office had its power restored on Sunday, four days after Hurricane Ian slammed into the west coast of Florida as a Category 4 storm. The office reopened on Monday, Halbower said.

Across the state, roughly 380,000 homes and businesses were without power as of Tuesday afternoon, down from a peak of 2.6 million on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us. Collier County, which includes Naples, remains one of the counties with the most outages.

Pentwater isn’t the only investor that’s set for a big payday should the Musk deal close.

Longtime shareholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 39.95 million shares, worth $2.17 billion at the acquisition price. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO, owns 18.04 million shares, valued at close to $1 billion. Among institutions, the only investors with a bigger stake than Pentwater are Vanguard, BlackRock, SSgA and Fidelity.

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Benioff says he’s ‘inspired’ by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

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Benioff says he's 'inspired' by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on what the market is getting wrong about AI

Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.

The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.

“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”

Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.

Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.

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It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”

The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.

“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.

The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.

Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.

Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.

Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.

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Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.

We're seeing an incredible transformation in enterprise, says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

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Gemini, the Winklevoss’ crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

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Gemini, the Winklevoss' crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.

The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.

The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.

Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.

The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.

Gemini co-founders Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss: Bitcoin is gold 2.0, can easily go 10x from here

The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.

In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.

Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.

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Opendoor board chair Rabois says company is ‘bloated,’ needs to cut 85% of workforce

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Opendoor board chair Rabois says company is 'bloated,' needs to cut 85% of workforce

Opendoor chairman Keith Rabois: We're going to get back to merit and excellence

Opendoor co-founder and newly minted board chair Keith Rabois said remote work and a “bloated” workforce have been a drag on the company’s culture, as he vowed to slash headcount.

“There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.

The online real-estate platform on Wednesday appointed former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO after investor pressure caused his predecessor, Carrie Wheeler, to resign last month. Opendoor also named Rabois as chairman and said Eric Wu, who served as the company’s first CEO before stepping down in 2023, would return to the board.

The announcement sent Opendoor shares soaring 78% on Thursday, before the stock slid more than 12% on Friday. It is still up almost 500% this year, after an army of retail investors pushed up the stock price when hedge fund manager Eric Jackson began touting the company.

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Opendoor year-to-date stock chart.

Opendoor’s business involves using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains.

Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson bought shares of Opendoor in July. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.

Rabois said he has a “high level view of the strategy” that’s needed to transform Opendoor, and that the headcount reductions are necessary to resolve the company’s cash burn.

“The culture was broken,” Rabois said. “These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.”

He added that Opendoor “went down this DEI path,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We’re gonna fix all that,” Rabois said.

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