Did Steve Ballmer Buy Twitter Stock? A Mysterious Twitter Account Says So

But that Ballmer account is not verified.

Twitter. And anyway, why wouldn’t Ballmer just change the handle on his account rather than create a new one?

There was also a link to this tweet from the new Twitter account, which is not yet verified. Jack Dorsey owns slightly more than 3pc.

A tweet posted on Friday claimed that Mr Ballmer had purchased 4pc of Twitter shares in recent months, praising Twitter for its “good job” appointing Mr Dorsey as CEO and creating a “leaner, more focused” company.

Alwaleed Bin Talal last week disclosed that he had more than a 5 percent stake.

The unverified account appears to be in fact Ballmer’s as his verified one where he represents the Los Angeles Clippers points followers to this new one.

Following the news, Twitter’s stock is up 1.88 percent after opening up at $30.08.

“It could be”, FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi said when asked if Ballmer’s stake could be indicative of confidence in Dorsey and his strategy.

Twitter and Ballmer were not immediately available for comment to Reuters.

Ballmer is quite the eccentric, and when he left Microsoft in 2013 this was how he signed off. At Twitter’s current valuation of $20.76 billion, that stake is worth around $830 million.

The former Microsoft CEO, who led the company from 2000 to 2013 before stepping down past year, also still owns about 4 percent in Microsoft and is the largest individual shareholder of the Redmond tech giant.

The Ballmer news caps a busy two weeks for Twitter.