Explained: Why Elon Musk Bought Twitter For Rs 3.62 Lakh Crore & Fired CEO Parag Agrawal
Elon Musk¡¯s Twitter acquisition (Now X) set a lot of tongues wagging! While many expressed their disappointment, others were highly curious about the Tesla CEO¡¯s interest in the micro-blogging platform.?
What Compelled Elon Musk To Acquire Twitter?
It started when Parag Agrawal, Twitter's ex-CEO, refused Musk's plea to close the @ElonJet account, which was monitoring the billionaire's private jet location. Subsequently, Musk took action to remove Parag Agrawal from his position.
This piece of information came to light in Bloomberg¡¯s Kurt Wagner¡¯s book titled ¡®Battle for the Bird.¡¯?
It began circulating when Wagner's employer released the initial excerpt from the book. The book is scheduled for release on February 20.
According to the excerpt, Elon Musk first contacted Parag Agrawal in January 2022 in reference to the account ¡ª @ElonJet, run by American programmer Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida.
Sweeney was not only tracking musk but other private jet owners including prominent figures like ex-US President Donald Trump, Microsoft¡¯s Bill Gates, Amazon¡¯s Jeff Bezos, among others. He did so using multiple accounts on Twitter. He gained recent attention for reportedly stalking and harassing musician Taylor Swift by monitoring her jet activity. This incident has sparked concerns about privacy and online harassment.
Musk tried to resolve this by offering Sweeney $5,000 to stop his tracking activities, which Sweeney countered with a request for $50,000 or an internship. Amid so much media attention, Musk decided against paying Sweeney and instead blocked his personal Twitter account.
It was only after Agrawal denied Tesla CEO¡¯s request to remove the account that Elon Musk started purchasing Twitter shares. This led to him having conversations with the platform¡¯s co-founder Jack Dorsey.
ElonJet was later banned after a stalker allegedly targeted a vehicle carrying Musk's two-year-old son. Musk announced legal action against Sweeney and supporting organizations via Twitter.
Before he bought the platform, Musk initially sought a seat on the board of directors. He then acquired Twitter in October 2022 for a whopping sum of $44 billion ( Rs 3.62 lakh crore approx)
Even the Twitter acquisition didn¡¯t deter Jack Sweeney from posting about the travel updates of Musk¡¯s plane on other social networking sites.
Who Is Parag Agarwal?
The IIT graduate genius was hired by Twitter as CEO for a jaw-dropping package of Rs 100 crore. However, he couldn¡¯t last even a year as he was fired in the wake of the Musk-Sweeney¡¯s fiasco.?
As soon as Musk joined Twitter, he sacked Agarwal and the account tracking location of billionaires¡¯ jets was also blocked. As per reports, Parag Agrawal has ventured into the AI segment and has already secured big funding of Rs 249 crore for his startup. His company is reportedly building software for developers of large language models, popularised by OpenAI¡¯s chatbot ChatGPT.?
According to the report, Khosla Ventures, led by Vinod Khosla, an early supporter of OpenAI, spearheaded the funding in Agrawal's company. Additionally, there are reports that Index Ventures and First Round Capital also took part in the investment.
Prior to joining Twitter in 2011, Agrawal completed internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo. After approximately six years at Twitter, he assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer, succeeding Adam Messinger.
