Musk to Hold First Meeting With Twitter Employees Since Launching Takeover Bid

Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during a press conference at SpaceX's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in south Texas on Feb. 10, 2022. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to hold his first meeting with Twitter staff this week amid his bid to purchase the social media company.

The virtual meeting, which is set to take place on June 16, was first reported by Business Insider after being announced by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in an email to staff on June 13. It was subsequently confirmed to the BBC by a Twitter spokesperson.

The Epoch Times has also contacted a Twitter spokesperson for comment.

In his email to Twitter employees, Agrawal said they could submit questions to businessman Musk ahead of the meeting which he could then answer.

The planned meeting will mark the first time that Musk, the world’s richest person, has addressed Twitter workers since he launched his $44 billion takeover bid of the company.

However, that bid is currently on hold amid a disagreement over precise figures regarding the exact number of automated or “bot” accounts that exist on the platform.

In May, Musk accused Twitter of allowing a significant number of bot accounts on the platform and asked that the company provide him with data stating the exact number of bot accounts, which he estimates to be up to 90 percent.

Twitter has stated during its first quarter of 2022, spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of monetizable daily active users, a statement that Musk disputes.

The businessman has subsequently said he will not go ahead with the deal unless Twitter provides an exact figure pertaining to spam accounts.

In a letter sent to Twitter’s chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde on June 6, Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his attempts to obtain information about the bot accounts and that doing so is a “material breach” of the deal agreement.

Lawyers said that Twitter has “refused to provide the information that Mr. Musk has repeatedly requested since May 9, 2022, to facilitate his evaluation of spam and fake accounts on the company’s platform” and that “Twitter’s latest offer to simply provide additional details regarding the company’s own testing methodologies, whether through written materials or verbal explanations, is tantamount to refusing Mr. Musk’s data requests.”

“Mr. Musk has made it clear that he does not believe the company’s lax testing methodologies are adequate so he must conduct his own analysis. The data he has requested is necessary to do so,” lawyers noted.

Such a material breach, lawyers said, allows for Musk “not to consummate the transaction” and “terminate the merger agreement.”