Elon Musk has now officially completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.
As reported by Bloomberg, Twitter is now a private company owned fully by Musk. In his first move, he fired CEO Parag Agrawal who had taken the role back in November 2021 following co-founder Jack Dorsey’s resignation from the position. Agrawal was previously the Chief Technology Officer and had been with Twitter for over a decade. He has also fired the CFO, Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust, and safety and its general counsel.
It seems like Musk was eyeing firing Agrawal, as he previously said that the former CEO doesn’t “have confidence in management.” Additionally, Musk and Agrawal had public feuds on Twitter, including a tweet where Musk replied by Agrawal about “defending the company’s user metrics by tweeting back a poop emoji.”
Agrawal is still walking away with 100% of his unvested equity awards, which means that he will make an estimated $42 million despite his termination.
Vijae Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy, and trust, was also fired. He had been in charge of enforcing and creating the rules for the platform, which now appear to be up to be changed.
Musk had previously explained that he was planning on making Twitter a “less-restrictive platform for free speech,” which he deems is “essential to a functioning democracy.” Many believe that users like Donald Trump may be returned to the platform under these new guidelines.
Chief financial officer Ned Segal was also fired from Twitter after working there since 2017. General counsel Sean Edgett is out as well and has been with the company since 2012. This round of firings is likely not the last, as Musk is reportedly planning on cutting nearly 75% of Twitter’s workforce in the future, or about 5,500 jobs.
Elon Musk’s Twitter deal seemed to be hanging in the air after it looked like he wanted to terminate the deal. Twitter was set to take him to court on October 28 if the deal was not completed, but Musk avoided that narrowly.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
