Twitter is now an Elon Musk company

Elon Musk, Twitter’s most important shit posteradded the company to its business empire after months of legal skirmishes, corresponding CNBC, The Washington Post. and insider.

Musk’s first move Thursday was to oust Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s last CEO as a public company. CFO Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, the company’s policy chief whom Musk publicly criticized, also reportedly left the building. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is gone too, The New York Times reports, adding that at least one of those executives has been fired from security. Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette was also fired, insider reports.

The executives received handsome payments for their efforts, insider Reports: Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was about Musk’s acquisitionShe got $11.2 million.

Musk originally offered to buy Twitter in April, then changed his mind and tried to back down in May. He then changed his mind again on Oct. 4 and filed a letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirming his commitment to the original deal. Musk met with Twitter employees this week and is expected to address them on Friday after his $44 billion acquisition closes.

Musk was scheduled to be removed on October 6 and 7, after delaying his departure from late September. He announced that he would honor the contract his lawyers negotiated just days before the interrogation. That statement would probably be uncomfortable; A judge determined that Musk likely deleted signals messages relevant to the case. That statement was delayed while Musk and Twitter worked towards an agreement; Musk even received a court order to drop the case so the deal could close by Oct. 28.

Questions still remain about what Musk intends to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he has made a number of public comments. The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to lay off 75 percent of Twitter employees, citing estimates given to potential Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staff that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. In Musk’s text messages, provided to Twitter’s lawyers during the discovery, he and friend of his, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, discussed downsizing by demanding a return to office.

“Day zero,” wrote Calacanis Musk. “Sharpen your blades, boys.” Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of employees would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Calacanis also told Musk, “Twitter CEO is my dream job.”

Twitter is also facing challenges in court over its freedom of speech, as the Supreme Court has agreed to pick up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content.

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has proposed changing how Twitter moderation works, potentially relaxing the kind of policies that permanently banned former President Donald Trump from the platform.

Though Musk has said his Twitter acquisition “isn’t a way to make money,” he’s reportedly put forward ideas to cut costs and increase sales. Governments and businesses could be charged a “small fee” for using Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table to improve the company’s bottom line. Some of Twitter’s current staff have criticized Musk’s plans for the platform as “incoherent” and lacking in detail.

More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create “X, the Everything App.” This is a reference to China’s WeChat app, which started out as a messaging platform but has since expanded into multiple businesses, from shopping to payments to gaming. “They basically live on WeChat in China,” Musk told Twitter staffers in June. “If we can replicate that with Twitter, we’ll be a big hit.”