“Are You Saying No to Elon Musk?”: Scenes from the Slash-and-Burn Buyout of Twitter

The article centers on Twitter’s leadership meeting on October 27, 2022, as Parag Agrawal tells executives the deal may close that day. The room is tense, with staff asking what will happen next and to their jobs, while Agrawal and Ned Segal can offer only limited answers.

It also shows how little Twitter knew about Musk’s financing. The finance team tried to track his money through stock sales and disclosures, and later Antonio Gracias told them Musk was short by more than $400 million and wanted Twitter to wire money to close the deal.

Reading notes

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• Agrawal calls the leadership team together at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters as Musk’s acquisition nears completion.
• Executives from finance, product, human resources, sales, and other offices join in person and on video.
• The meeting feels like Agrawal’s last one, and the room expects major layoffs or departures.
• Agrawal says the deal might close that day and praises what Twitter’s team has done.
• Executives ask what will happen next, including what they should tell advertisers and employees.
• Someone asks what will happen to Agrawal and the other leaders.
• Segal says he has not talked to Musk and will stay open until he does.
• Agrawal tells each executive to make their own decision.
• Segal becomes emotional and says people remember how you handle hard moments.
• Twitter’s finance team jokes about trying to track where Musk’s money is coming from.
• Musk’s lawyers once sent Twitter a spreadsheet of people and firms they had approached for funding, then demanded it be deleted.
• Twitter employees speculate about hidden crypto holdings or margin loans backed by SpaceX shares.
• The article says the Wall Street Journal later reported Musk borrowed $1 billion from SpaceX in October and repaid it the next month.
• Twitter wants Musk to pay, but executives worry he could still test the deadline by claiming he lacks the funds.
• Twitter executives believe Musk put the funds into a single account so the company could not trace their origin.
• On a Thursday call, Gracias says Musk is actually short by more than $400 million and asks Twitter to wire money from its own accounts so the deal can close.
• Segal and the accounting chief Robert Kaiden react with disbelief.