Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted its CEO and at least two other top executives, according to numerous reports.
Two people familiar with the deal told The Associated Press Thursday night that CEO Parag Agrawal and Twitter’s chief financial officer and top lawyer had been shown the door.
The sources wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or whether the deal had closed. But they said Musk is in charge of the social media platform. Neither source wanted to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the personnel moves.
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Musk himself tweeted late Thursday that “the bird is freed,” referring to Twitter’s famous logo and indicating he was indeed in charge.
The move to close the deal, which came a day before a court-imposed deadline to finalize the transaction, caps a tumultuous six-month pursuit in which the billionaire launched his shock bid for Twitter this spring, only to reverse course in July and declare he was withdrawing it.
His swift dismissal of Twitter’s top two executives punctuates what is expected to be a period of dramatic change at the social media company. And where Musk — a serial entrepreneur whose companies have disrupted the payments, auto and space exploration sectors — takes Twitter now is anyone’s guess.
Next Step
With Musk taking the helm, attention will turn to what steps he can take to revitalize Twitter, whose growth has slowed sharply in recent years. In the short term, that could involve laying off up to three-quarters of Twitter’s workforce, The Washington Post reported last week. Musk, who has been vocal in saying he overpaid for Twitter, might find it tempting to slash labor costs as a way to balance the books.
More challenging will be devising a strategy to drive growth at Twitter, whose roughly 238 million regular users pale in comparison to other social networks like Facebook and TikTok. On that front, Musk has previously floated the idea of creating a “super app” like WeChat, which in China is used for everything from banking and hailing a ride to buying groceries and chatting with friends.
Also remaining to be seen is how Musk might change Twitter’s user policies. In launching his unsolicited bid in April, he highlighted the company’s “potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe,” while noting that Twitter in its current form “will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative.”
That imperative could include allowing former President Donald Trump back on Twitter, which permanently suspended him from the platform last year in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, citing the risk of further violence.
Musk, meanwhile, had been signaling that the deal was going through. He strolled into the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”
And overnight the New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.
