By now, we already know that Twitter has been bought by the billionaire and CEO of Tesla, among other high-profile companies, Elon Musk. The development was officially announced yesterday.
It has also emerged that Elon Musk’s first order of business was to reorganize Twitter’s top management team. To this end, Musk has reportedly fired some execs following his takeover. These are:
- CEO Parag Agrawal
- CFO Ned Segal
- Legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde
- General Counsel Sean Edgett
Circling back to the Twitter bid, Musk had agreed to buy the social media platform back in April 2022 for USD 44 billion. A couple of weeks later, the billionaire threatened to end the deal because Twitter had allegedly misreported some of its numbers, including its spambot count. However, Musk reversed his earlier plan and decided to buy Twitter anyway this October.
It is not clear who will fill the spaces left by the exit of the said executives. It is also not clear whether Musk will take the CEO role as he has done in his other companies. It should also be remembered that Musk has criticized some of the fired execs, including the CEO and Vijaya. For instance, Musk has previously mentioned that Twitter showcased left-wing political bias. He also believes that Gadde was part of the team that decided to permanently ban former US President Trump from the platform. Gadde has since been called a censorship advocate in a platform that should promote free speech.
The acquisition of Twitter will see it roll back to being a private company. It will also add to Elon’s diverse business reach, which includes running the aforementioned Tesla, as well as SpaceX, the Boring Company, Neuralink, and many others.
Elon, who at one time became the largest shareholder in Twitter, had said that the deal would be completed mostly with cash from himself and other co-investors, as well as a USD 13 million debt.
The closing of the transactions now ends the debate of whether Elon would or would not buy Twitter. It also means that Twitter is now being run by the world’s richest person. How this will play in incoming online discourse is something we will have to wait and see. However, Elon believes in free speech and has since promised that content moderation will be toned down. Will this raise some concerns among advertisers, politicians, and users? Only time will tell.
