The world's richest person, Elon Musk, has won his brief battle for control of social-media platform Twitter.
It emerged overnight that the board of the company has now agreed to a £34.5billion takeover.
Mr Musk, who made the shock bid less than two weeks ago, said Twitter had "tremendous potential".
He also called for a series of changes from relaxing its content restrictions to eradicating fake accounts.
The BBC reports that the firm, which initially rebuffed Mr Musk's bid, will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the deal.
Mr Musk has an estimated net worth of more than £200billion, mostly due to his shareholding in electric vehicle maker Tesla which he runs. He also leads aerospace firm SpaceX.
The high-profile entrepreneur said: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.
"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans."
"Twitter has tremendous potential - I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
The move comes as Twitter faces growing pressure from politicians and regulators over the content that appears on its platform. It has drawn critics from left and right over its efforts to mediate misinformation on the platform.
In one of its most high-profile moves, last year it banned former US President Donald Trump, perhaps its most-powerful user, citing the risk of "incitement of violence".
At the time Mr Musk observed: "A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech."
News of the takeover has been cheered by the right in the US, although Mr Trump said on Monday he had no plans to rejoin the platform.
MP Julian Knight, chairman of the UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, called the deal an "extraordinary development in the world of social media".
He added: "It will be interesting to see how a privately-owned Twitter (run by a man who is an absolutist over free speech) will react to global moves to regulate."
Reuters says that discussions over the deal, which last week appeared uncertain, accelerated over the weekend after Mr Musk wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer.
Under pressure, Twitter started negotiating with Mr Musk to buy the company at his proposed £42.52 per share price.
Twitter shares rose 5.7% on Monday to close at £40.56. The deal represents a near-40% premium to the closing price the day before Mr Musk disclosed he had bought a more than 9% stake.
Even so, the offer is well below the £55 range where Twitter was trading last year.
Jonathan Boyar, managing director at Boyar Value Group, which holds a stake in Twitter, told Reuters: "I think if the company were given enough time to transform, we would have made substantially more than what Musk is currently offering."
However, he added: "If the public markets do not properly value a company, an acquirer eventually will."
Mr Musk's move continues a tradition of billionaires' buying control of influential media platforms, including Jeff Bezos' 2013 acquisition of the Washington Post.
Twitter said Mr Musk secured £20billion of debt and margin loan financing and is providing a £16billion equity commitment.
The BBC adds that, despite its influence, Twitter has rarely turned a profit and user growth, particularly in the US, has slowed.
The company, founded in 2004, ended 2021 with less than £4billion in revenue and 217million daily users globally - a fraction of the figures claimed by other platforms such as Facebook.