Twitter continues to inch its way to a sale process, and the latest developments come in the form of alleged bids from potential buyers. Today CNBC is reporting, and we have also independently heard, that both Google and Salesforce are interested in buying the company. We have additionally heard that Microsoft and Verizon have also been knocking, although right now Verizon (which also owns AOL, which owns us), may have a little too much on its plate.
Twitter currently has a market cap of $13.3 billion, and it opened for trading today with a jump of nearly 22%, in response to all these whispers.
Google, Microsoft and Verizon have also been reported as potential suitors in the past (one recent article here), and what we’re hearing about the Microsoft interest is that it, in part, is an attempt by the company to drive the price up to keep it out of Salesforce’s hands.
“At this moment Microsoft has nothing to share,” a spokesperson said when reached for comment. But that begs another point, though: Of the four companies that we’ve heard about, the one that might be most surprising as a suitor is Salesforce.
Salesforce currently has around half of the current market cap of Twitter in its own cash reserves, meaning that if it acquired the company, it would need to raise the remainder elsewhere if it’s an all-cash deal, or it would need to make the rest of the purchase in shares. It would be the highest-ever acquisition by the very acquisitive Salesforce, which has already spent more than $4 billion on acquisitions in the first six months of this year.
Then again, it tried, but missed out, on buying LinkedIn (which Microsoft is picking up for $26.2 billion), so expensive purchases are not out of its sights completely.
Ingrid was a writer and editor for TechCrunch, from February 2012 through May 2025, based out of London.
Before TechCrunch, Ingrid worked at paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect.
When it comes to work, she feels most comfortable speaking in English but can also speak Russian, Spanish and French (in descending order of competence).
Katie Roof was a senior writer and video host at TechCrunch. She also co-hosted TechCrunch’s “Equity” podcast about tech finance. Previously, Roof was a tech reporter for FOXBusiness.com and has been a contributor at Reuters, TheStreet and Forbes. She has held television production roles at CNN and Bloomberg TV. Roof has a Master’s in Business Journalism from Columbia University.
Matt Lynley was a reporter at TechCrunch covering elements of the AI industry.
Ron Miller was an enterprise reporter at TechCrunch.
Previously, he was a long-time Contributing Editor at EContent Magazine. Past regular gigs included CITEworld, DaniWeb, TechTarget, Internet Evolution and FierceContentManagement.
Disclosures:
Ron was formerly corporate blogger for Intronis where he wrote once weekly on IT issues. He has contributed to various corporate blogs in the past including Ness, Novell and the IBM Mid-market Blogger Program.