Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk said in a filing on Monday he will serve as chief executive of Twitter, the social media company he just bought for $44 billion, a move that Wall Street analysts have said could stretch the billionaire thin.
Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company, fired Twitter's previous chief, Parag Agrawal, and other top company officials last week.
Tesla's stock has lost a third of its value since Musk made an offer to buy Twitter in April, compared with a 12% decline in the benchmark S&P 500 index in the same period.
Musk had previously changed his Twitter bio to "Chief Twit" in an allusion to his planned move.
Twitter on Monday declined comment on how long Musk might remain CEO or appoint someone else.
In another filing on Monday, Musk revealed that he became the sole director of Twitter as a result of the takeover.
"The following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou," Musk said in the filing.
Shortly afterward, Musk tweeted that the move to dissolve the board "is just temporary," without elaborating.
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Last week, Musk's takeover of the social media company for $44 billion concluded a months-long saga.
Since the takeover Musk has moved quickly to put his stamp on Twitter, which he had ridiculed for months for being slow to introduce product changes or take down spam accounts.
His teams began meeting with some employees to investigate Twitter's software code and understand how aspects of the platform worked, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Some staff who spoke with Reuters said they had received little communication from Musk or other leaders and were using news reports to piece together what was happening at the company.
Now that Musk has completed the deal, here are some of the most significant changes he could make:
$20 for blue tick verification
One option, The Verge reports, would be to require verified users to sign up for the platform's paid subscription service, Twitter Blue, which currently costs just under five dollars a month.
That price would increase to around $20 a month, and if unpaid, verified users would lose their blue check mark.
"The whole verification process is being revamped right now," tweeted Musk on Sunday.
To relaunch Vine
The new boss has also asked teams to relaunch Vine by the end of the year, newsite Axios reported.
Twitter bought the ultra-short video app in 2012, long before TikTok became the format's dominant player, but shuttered it four years later.
Plans to fire nearly 75% of workforce
The Washington Post has reported that the multi-billionaire plans to fire some 75% of his new company's 7,500 employees.
New content moderation council
Musk's previous comments condemning Twitter's content moderation policies as heavy-handed - as well as his frequent posts of boundary-testing memes - has given pause to some advertisers, the company's main source of revenue.
He tried to calm the nerves by reassuring that the site would not become a "free-for-all hellscape," and announced the formation of a content moderation council.
New investors
Elon Musk bought Twitter Inc. last week for $44 billion with the help of Wall Street bank loans and shareholders who agreed to roll over their interest in the social media service in exchange for a stake of the new private company.
That means Twitter, whose shares were delisted last week after almost a decade as a public company, has a new lineup of top investors.
An IPO in 2026?
Rohit Kulkarni, a financial analyst at MKM partners, said he expects Musk's business impact on Twitter to be positive, predicting a $100 billion initial public offering in 2026. But some advertisers remain skeptical. General Motors Co. said it is temporarily suspending advertising on Twitter until it has a better understanding of what will happen to it with Musk at the helm.
