Elon Musk has finally completed his Twitter deal which cost him about $44 billion. A source familiar with what was happening told news outlets that the Tesla CEO has finally settled his differences with Twitter.
The new Twitter boss has already started the massive layoffs he planned by firing the CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, and two other top executives from the company. When Twitter was reached for comments on the matter, they declined.
Elon Musk had already hinted or announced that he had completed the deal when he tweeted, "the bird is freed," on Twitter.
With the recent development of completing the deal, the new Twitter owner, Elon Musk, has avoided a full-blown trial that would have occurred if he did not meet the deadline. The law court judge presiding in Delaware had given Elon Musk the 28th of October as the deadline for the Twitter deal.
Twitter Executives Fired
By firing the company's top executives barely 24 hours after taking over, the controversial billionaire has already started raising questions about how he will run the social media platform. The now-former CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, the CFO, Ned Segal, and the policy head Vijaya Gadde were among those who the layoffs started with.
With a frozen codebase and absent CEO, Twitter employees are already bracing for massive layoffs. The billionaire plans to reduce the headcount of those working for the company by more than 75%. Others who want to avoid receiving the layoff letter are already turning elsewhere for jobs as they are no longer sure of their job security.
In a recent report, Twitter has about 7500 employees, but the Tesla CEO is already planning to reduce this number of staff to around 2,000. If Elon Musk successfully does this, more than 5,000 people could have their job terminated.
The news of Elon Musk firing more than 5,000 people has raised questions about how the richest man in the world plans to improve the platform. It is said that the majority of those who will be laid off are within the content moderation department. Others question whether Twitter will still be a good place to hold conversations if the content people post is not moderated.
There are already speculations that Elon Musk, the self-styled "free speech" ambassador, will try to bring back the suspended account of Donald Trump. Donald Trump suspended his account on Twitter after making certain comments about the past United States elections.
Rocky Road to a Completed Deal
It has been a challenging road for Elon Musk to become the new Twitter owner. The billionaire had raised controversies for himself after he tried to leave the deal.
Shortly after agreeing to buy the social media platform for around $44 billion, Elon Musk accused Twitter of having a greater percentage of bots on the platform.
To stop Elon Musk from having his way, Twitter sued him, and the issue was taken to court. The judge presiding over the case gave Elon Musk October 28th as the deadline for the completion of the deal or risk a new trial.
Elon Musk gave the deal a second thought as he has been reported to have completed the deal on Thursday, 27th October 2022.