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Elon Musk has decided to relaunch the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, and the richest man in the world is claiming the purchase will accelerate the development of his long-discussed "everything app."

After months of litigation, the Tesla CEO is looking to avoid a court battle by offering to buy the social media platform for the price he originally agreed in April, valuing Twitter at $54.20 per share.

Musk followed up news of his renewed offer to buy the firm with a tweet claiming the move would accelerate the creation of "X, the everything app."

The billionaire responded to a comment suggesting it would be faster to build X from scratch, saying: "Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong."

Musk made the same claim during a Tesla annual shareholder meeting in August. He told shareholders he had a "grander vision for what I thought X Corporation could have been back in the day." 

"It's a pretty grand vision and of course that could be started from scratch but I think Twitter would accelerate that by three to five years."

Musk has previously teased X.com as a possible Twitter competitor. In August, Musk responded to a question asking if he'd launch his own site instead of buying Twitter by tweeting "X.com."

X.com was originally an online bank co-founded by Musk in 1999. The company later merged with another online payment system and became PayPal. In 2017, Musk bought the domain name and relaunched the site.