NEW YORK, April 18 — Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk posted a tweet on Saturday saying "Love Me Tender”, days after he took aim at Twitter Inc with a US$43 billion (RM182.1 billion) cash takeover offer.

After Musk's TED talk on Thursday, he hinted at the possibility of a hostile bid in which he would bypass Twitter's board and put the offer directly to its shareholders, tweeting: "It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote”.

Over the weekend Musk, already the San Francisco-based company's second-largest shareholder after amassing a 9.1 per cent stake in the social media firm, tweeted Twitter board's "economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders”.

Twitter on Friday adopted a "poison pill” to limit Musk's ability to raise his stake in the company.

Thoma Bravo, a technology-focused private equity firm that had more than US$103 billion in assets under management as of the end of December, informed Twitter that it was exploring the possibility of putting together a bid, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. — Reuters