After months of back and forth since Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter last spring, the highly publicized $44 billion acquisition closed late Thursday — just one day short of a court order to complete the purchase.
Musk has often described what the social platform would look like under his ownership. That has ranged from softening standards to tamp down misinformation, inviting back former President Donald Trump, introducing features that create new revenue streams — and layoffs, which he lost no time doing on Thursday evening by firing the company’s top management, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust and safety, as well as Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel.