Elon Musk will run Twitter after he buys it – report

Tesla boss Elon Musk has pledged to support free speech and ‘defeat the spam bots’ after Twitter takeover (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty)

Elon Musk will take over as chief executive of Twitter after he completes his £35bn takeover, it was reported on Thursday, as details emerged of new investors in the social media giant.

The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire will hold the role for a few months following the buyout, it has been reported.

A regulatory filing on Thursday revealed Musk is in talks with other parties for additional funding commitments, including Silicon Valley heavy hitters such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey.

Twitter is currently run by Parag Agrawal, who took over when co-founder Dorsey announced he would be resigning the position in November 2021.

Mr Musk has been critical of the current Twitter management, and has suggested that disagreements with its current leadership about how the social network is run are at least part of the reason for him to buy the company.

In his initial letter making an offer for the company, sent to its chair of the board Bret Taylor, Mr Musk said that he does not “have confidence in management”. That lack of confidence would lead him to “reconsider his position as a shareholder” if he is not able to buy the company.

But until now it has been unclear how Mr Musk plans for the company to be run if his purchase is successful. In a report last week, it emerged that he had chosen a new chief executive for Twitter – but that their identity would remain secret.

In that same report, Mr Musk was said to have made a number of commitments as part of his pitch to banks to fund the deal, including reducing the pay of its board, job cuts, and other feature changes such as charging some governments and organisations to use Twitter.

Mr Musk’s period at the top of Twitter would last “a few months”, it has been reported, suggesting that someone else would step in to run the firm after the deal had settled.