SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk, who recently became Twitter’s biggest shareholder, will not be joining the social media giant’s board of directors, the company announced on Monday.
Last week Twitter said Mr Musk would be joining its board, a day after disclosing that the Tesla chief took a nearly 10 per cent stake in the social media platform.
But early on Monday, Twitter’s chief executive Parag Agarwal announced on the platform that Mr Musk has decided not to join the social media giant’s board after all.
The company said in a regulatory filing last Tuesday that it entered into an agreement with Mr Musk which would give the world’s richest person a seat on its board for a term expiring at its 2024 annual shareholders meeting.
“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!” Mr Musk wrote following the announcement.
The Tesla chief even joked that he would smoke weed at Twitter’s board meetings, and has also been publicly tweeting his ideas for the platform.
Mr Musk also posted a poll on Twitter asking his followers whether the social media platform should have an edit feature to allow users to fix errors in their tweets, after which the company also confirmed it was working on the long-requested feature.
He even suggested that users of the social media platform’s subscription service Twitter Blue should “maybe” get an option to “pay in Doge,” referring to the cryptocurrency – but as always, it’s hard to know when Mr Musk is serious on the platform.
Following these developments over the last week, Mr Agarwal shared a note early on Monday that Mr Musk would not be joining Twitter’s board.
“We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become official effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Mr Agarwal said in a note.
“Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input,” he said, adding that he believes this is “for the best”.
Mr Agarwal said Twitter “has and will always” value input from its shareholders whether they are on the company’s board or not.
While he says there could be “distractions ahead,” the Twitter chief added that the company’s goals and priorities remain unchanged.
“The decisions we make and how we execute is in our hands, no one else’s. Let’s tune out the noise, and stay focused on the work and what we’re building,” Mr Agarwal said in the note.
