SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk participates in a joint press conference with T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert (not pictured) at SpaceX’s star base in Brownsville, Texas, United States, on August 25, 2022.
Addresses Latif | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now in charge of Twitter, CNBC has learned.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal have left the company’s headquarters in San Francisco and will not be returning, sources said. Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, trust and security policy, was also fired, the Washington Post reported.
Musk had until Friday to complete his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter or face a legal battle with the company.
In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s proposal to buy the social media service and take it private. However, Musk soon began to cast doubt on its intentions to honor the deal, claiming that the company did not adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service.
When Musk said he was ending the deal, Twitter sued the billionaire, claiming he is “refusing to fulfill his obligations to Twitter and its shareholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
In the months that followed, Twitter and Musk traded barbs through their lawyers as the two sides were scheduled to go to the Delaware Court of Chancery to determine the fate of the company and whether it would end up in the hands of the Tesla.
In early October, Musk changed his mind and said he wanted to proceed with his acquisition of Twitter at the original price of $54.20 per share if the social messaging service dropped its litigation. Suspicious of Musk’s motivations, Twitter lawyers said the Tesla CEO’s proposal “is an invitation to further mischief and delay.”
A Delaware Court of Chancery judge ultimately ruled that Musk had until Oct. 28 to consolidate the Twitter deal or go to trial.
On Thursday, Musk wrote a message intended to reassure advertisers that social messaging services would not become “a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said without consequence!”
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important for the future of civilization to have a common digital square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy way, without resorting to violence,” Musk said in the message “There is currently a great danger that social media will splinter into far-right and far-left echo chambers that breed more hatred and divide our society.”
Musk arrived at Twitter headquarters earlier this week carrying a sink and documented the event on Twitter, saying “Entering Twitter HQ, let it sink in!”
Musk also updated his Twitter description to “Chief Twit.”