Elon Musk asks: 'If I'm so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter?'

• Elon Musk said at a conference in Paris: "If I'm so smart then why did I pay so much for Twitter?"
• The Tesla CEO said he spent $44 billion as he was "concerned" about Twitter's "negative" effects.
• Musk also said he was worried Twitter was having a "corrosive" impact on society. 

When you're worth $229 billion, maybe it's not so hard to joke about dropping $44 billion on a takeover. 

That's what Elon Musk did on Friday at a conference in Paris, quipping: "If I'm so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter then?"

While admitting the deal was "expensive," he said he decided to buy the social media network because he was a big tweeter – and was worried about it "moving in a negative direction". 

"I was concerned Twitter was having a negative affect on civilization and corrosive affect on civil society, and anything that undermines civilization, I think, isn't good," he told the VivaTech conference.

"I felt Twitter kept moving in a negative direction and my hope and aspiration was for it to be a positive force for civilization." 

The world's richest person claimed that since he took control in late October, Twitter had been substantially cleaned up. 

"I think if someone is a regular Twitter user, then most people would say their experience has improved," Musk said.  "We've gotten rid of 90% of bots and scams and various bad things happening. We've gotten rid of 95% of child exploitation material on Twitter, which was a shock to see ... some of what was going on for 10 years." 

Earlier on Friday Musk met with Bernard Arnault, the world's second-richest person and CEO of LVMH for lunch at the company's Cheval Blanc hotel, Bloomberg reported. What the two discussed has not been revealed.

Arnault's son, Antoine, asked Musk some questions on stage at the conference. They included jokingly asking "how much longer" Musk would make LVMH "look so bad" given that Tesla's market value of $818 billion was far higher than LVMH's $476 billion. 

Musk responded: "Valuations are a strange thing because sometimes I've said the stock price is too high at Tesla and then the stock price goes up and I'm like 'okay.' When I tweet it's too high, it almost always goes up. In the case of Tesla the value of the company is primarily on the basis of autonomy."

Tesla's value peaked in late 2021 at just over $1.2 trillion and the stock has had a rollercoaster ride this year after falling as low as $113. Shares were trading at $261 on Friday.