Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter has been placed temporarily on hold, citing pending investigations on spam and fake accounts.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than five per cent of users,” Mr Musk said in a tweet on Friday.

In the tweet, Mr Musk cites a Reuters report where the social media platform estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than five per cent of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter.

Twitter’s share price dipped by 20 per cent to around $36 in premarket trading in response to Mr Musk’s announcement. 

Mr Musk, who had made an offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion in cash, had previously noted that his priorities included removing “spam bots” from the platform.

In April, Twitter reported an increase in its users but low ad sales. In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Twitter stopped advertisements in Ukraine and Russia in February. The company noted 12 million new users in the quarter, its highest rise in users since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The stalling of Twitter’s acquisition came day after serving CEO Parag Agrawal fired two top executives and implemented a hiring freeze in light of its acquisition.