Elon Musk has closed an effort to acquire social media giant Twitter for US$44 billion and fired several top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, The Washington Post reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Aside from Agrawal, Musk also fired CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde.
Without confirming any details on the deal, Musk detailed his thoughts on how advertisers could be handled on the platform.
He said that the platform could not become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said with no consequences. On top of that, he also tweeted a video of him entering the US-based firm’s headquarters.
The deal follows months of Musk’s journey to take full control of the social media platform. The Tesla and SpaceX founder earlier took a 9.2% stake in the firm, which made him one of Twitter’s largest shareholders.
He refused to join the company’s board, only to later reveal a takeover plan that Twitter had agreed to. At that time, he got support from cryptocurrency exchange Binance that committed US$500 million to the buyout, and Sequoia Capital that will shell out US$800 million for the deal.
In May, Musk said that the deal was on hold, with spam and fake accounts to blame.
In a statement, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that he is excited to help Musk realize a new vision for Twitter. “We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology,” he said.
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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