Steve Ballmer, former head of Microsoft and current owner of basketball team LA Clippers, owns 4% of Twitter now. And he’s already talking it up.
A tweet from an unverified Twitter account earlier this morning started the rumors, which caused some initial confusion.
Ballmer already has a verified Twitter account, which recently announced the existence of this other new Twitter account. Many nonetheless thought the unverified tweet was fake or was hacked. But multiple sources, including a representative from the LA Clippers, have confirmed to Quartz that the account is real.
Ballmer also tweeted at me saying it was real.
Cofounder and Medium CEO Evan Williams is the biggest individual investor in Twitter. He owns 6.9% of the company, according to according to financial analytics service FactSet, while Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud owns about 5.2%. Ballmer owns a bit less than them—4%, but that’s still more than Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who was recently named CEO and owns 3.2%.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. The stock is up 4.5% today on the news and 14% so far in October. (But the stock remains 36% below where it was 12 months ago.)