The first chapter of the saga between Twitter and Elon Musk has come to an end, but there’s much more to come. After first saying that he no longer had any interest in buying Twitter, Musk decided to agree to the deal after the company threatened to sue him. Now Elon Musk has officially taken over as owner and (temporary?) CEO of Twitter, and his first action there was to fire top executives from the company.
Musk fires Twitter executives and plans even more layoffs
As reported by The New York Times, Elon Musk started his new job as Twitter owner and CEO by “cleaning house at Twitter” with the resignation of at least four top executives on Thursday. This includes former company CEO Parag Agrawal, Twitter CFO Ned Segal, policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
The layoffs don’t seem to have occurred in a friendly situation. Anonymous NYT sources say that at least one of the executives was “escorted out of Twitter’s office.” None of the executives mentioned by the report responded to requests for comment.
Musk had until Friday to complete the acquisition of Twitter. On Wednesday, the billionaire was seen at the company’s headquarters talking to engineers and some executives. Elon Musk has publicly expressed his desire to make major changes to Twitter, especially when it comes to the moderation rules. He also plans to lay off more employees.
The saga between Musk and Twitter began in April, when the Tesla CEO announced that he would buy the social network for $44 billion. However, after a few months, Musk backed out of the deal, which resulted in Twitter suing him for not honoring the acquisition. Earlier this month, Musk reconsidered the deal and decided to buy Twitter.
During this dispute, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey left the company’s board while then CEO Parag Agrawal and Musk had been clashing ever since. At this point, no one really knows what the future of Twitter will be with Elon Musk as CEO. We also don’t know if Musk will choose someone else to be the CEO of Twitter in the future.
