Elon Musk is set to meet with Twitter employees on Thursday for the first time since he made a deal to buy the company for $44 billion in April.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sent a company-wide email Monday announcing the billionaire would attend an all-hands meeting this week. Staff reportedly will be allowed to submit questions in writing prior to the meeting.
The news was first reported by Business Insider.
Earlier this month, Twitter said it would offer Musk its “firehose” of data, including millions of daily tweets, in an effort to push the deal across the finish line, a source familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
Musk previously threatened to walk away from the agreement, accusing Twitter of withholding information on spam bot accounts, in a June 6 letter his lawyers sent to the company and shared in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
“As Twitter’s prospective owner, Mr. Musk is clearly entitled to the requested data to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter’s business to his ownership and to facilitate his transaction financing,” the letter reads. “To do both, he must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model—its active user base.”
His lawyers said Twitter’s refusal to share this data is a result of concern over what Musk’s analysis could reveal about the social media giant, accusing Twitter of “thwarting his information rights.”
“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” the letter stated.
Musk has repeatedly tweeted criticism of spam bots.
Agrawal tried to address Musk’s concerns in a Twitter thread in May, saying spam accounts make up less than 5% of monthly daily active users on the platform.
In response, Musk tweeted a poop emoji.
Musk is facing a lawsuit from a Twitter shareholder who accused him of deliberately criticizing the company in an effort to lower its stock price so he could secure a better price or walk away from the deal.
When Twitter’s board announced the deal on April 25, with Musk agreeing to buy the company for $44 billion, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO pledged to make changes.
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” Musk said in a press release at the time. “Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
But not all of Twitter’s employees shared his excitement. Some worry about what Musk’s takeover of the company will mean about their jobs and have privately expressed anger on internal Slack channels over Musk’s critical tweets about the company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Apart from Twitter, Musk also appeared to anger employees at two of his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX, when he announced staff would be expected to work a minimum of 40 hours per week in the office, according to The New York Times.
“If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” Musk wrote to Tesla employees.
This rule goes against Twitter’s policy to allow employees to work from home forever, if they choose to do so.
In the meantime, Twitter is already making changes, including firing two executives in May and announcing a hiring freeze with an exception for “business critical roles.”
