Twitter Lays Off Portion of Talent Acquisition Team Ahead of Elon Musk Deal

Caitlin Huston
·2 min read

Twitter laid off a portion of its talent acquisition team as the company continues to manage costs ahead of the social media platform’s potential acquisition by Elon Musk.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that Twitter let go of a third of the employees in this unit. Twitter confirmed the layoffs, which it said are limited to that team, to The Hollywood Reporter.

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The decision comes as the company has paused most of its hiring, as well as its backfilling of positions, except in critical roles. CEO Parag Agrawal previously said the company was in the midst of managing costs in a “very challenging macro environment.” In May, Agrawal fired Twitter’s general manager Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck, the company’s revenue product lead.

Meanwhile, Musk’s offer to buy Twitter hangs in the balance. The billionaire submitted a $44 billion offer, or $54.20 per share, to acquire the company in late April. The offer was accepted by the company, which recently urged its shareholders to approve the deal.

However, Musk himself appears to be waffling on the deal. He has been pushing Twitter to give detailed accounts on the number of spam accounts on the platform and has threatened to walk away from the deal if the company cannot provide data to support its public claims that these accounts make up less than 5 percent of the active user base.

Twitter released more information Thursday, telling executives that the number of spam accounts on the platform are even lower and that it actively removes 1 million spam accounts per day.

Still, Wall Street remains skeptical of a deal happening, at least at the original price point. Twitter’s stock is currently trading around $39.

“We believe the chances of a deal ultimately happening are currently at ~60% with a renegotiated bid at a lower price likely in the $42-$45 range due to the fake account issue. There is still a ~35% chance Musk decides to walk away from the deal, try to pay the $1 billion breakup fee, and likely end up in a nasty court battle with Twitter’s Board for the coming months,” Wedbush analysts wrote in a note Thursday.

Musk is expected to speak Saturday at Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley conference, where executives such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Chapek and Netflix chief Ted Sarandos are in attendance.

This article originally appeared in THR.com.

 

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