Elon Musk assumed ownership of Twitter and reportedly fired the company’s CEO.
Elon Musk has officially become the owner of the social media giant Twitter.
Freeing the bird, as he put it shortly after, the Tesla boss also detailed his intentions yesterday.
“The bird is freed,” tweeted Musk in a clear reference to Twitter’s logo after he assumed ownership of the company.
According to a Reuters report, citing sources familiar with the matter, he also fired the company’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, the Chief Financial Officer, Ned Segal, as well as the chief of legal affairs and policy Vijaya Gadde.
Interestingly enough, Vijaya Gadde was also the one who made the decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump.
Yesterday, Musk also shared an open letter to advertisers on the platform, outlining his intentions, and hinting at a potential subscription-based model.
Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.
Since the stock market has taken a tumble, so has Elon Musk’s net worth, most of which is comprised of shares held in his other companies.
As a result, Musk’s buyout of Twitter was financed through a combination of debt financing, personal wealth, and deals with co-investors. Some of the names include Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, or Binance’s very own Changpeng Zhao, who contributed $500 million to the deal. Now that the buyout has been completed, Musk reportedly plans to take Twitter private and halt public trading of its shares.
Twitter executives had already predicted that revenues gathered in 2022 would be way below target and had planned budget cuts in order to clean house for the next fiscal year.
A key way to do this was laying off staff to the tune of about $700 million, chiefly among third-party contractors in control of Twitter’s moderation, whose budget was due to be reduced by a quarter. A reduction of company infrastructure and data centers was also on the table.