Following the news of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk putting his acquisition of Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) on hold, current Twitter boss Parag Agrawal had something to say.
Here’s some background: Musk tweeted early Friday morning that the “Twitter deal [is] temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users’.” He later followed up by saying he’s “still committed to the acquisition.”
The tech billionaire who has long been involved with the social media platform has been a vocal proponent of removing spam bot accounts and authenticating real humans with a new verification system.
This news, however, is seen as a pretext for Musk to back out of the deal, per the AP.
See Also: 3 Implications From Elon Musk Putting Twitter Deal On Hold
Agrawal, throughout the drama, seems to have a keen focus on continuing to build the platform and said as much in a tweet thread Friday afternoon.
While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter. I’m accountable for leading and operating Twitter, and our job is to build a stronger Twitter every day.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 13, 2022
Why It Matters: Twitter, which has let go of general manager Kayvon Beykpour and revenue product lead Bruce Falck ahead of Musk's potential takeover, now faces the new obstacle of Musk not even buying the firm.
"No one at Twitter is working just to keep the lights on," Agrawal said in a Friday tweet. "We take pride in our work. Regardless of the company’s future ownership, we’re here improving Twitter as a product and business for customers, partners, shareholders, and all of you."
Agrawal said he "will also try to bring more transparency to the work that we do. You won’t see tweets from me on the ‘topic of the day’ or the loudest sound bite, but rather on the ongoing, continuous, and challenging work our teams are doing to improve the public conversation on Twitter."
TWTR Price action: Twitter shares fell 9.76% to close Friday's session at $40.72. Tesla shares climbed 5.71% to close at $769.59.