Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has fired two top executives and frozen most new hiring, alongside slashing spending, The New York Times reported Thursday (May 12).
The executives that are gone are general manager Kayvon Beykpour and general manager for revenue Bruce Falck, the NYT wrote. Both men initially said on Twitter that they’d been fired, though Falck appeared to delete the tweet later.
Beykpour is being replaced by Jay Sullivan, the interim general manager of consumer product.
This comes as the company is looking to shift its business strategies as a takeover by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, looms.
Agrawal shared a memo with employees saying the company was pausing the bulk of its hiring and wouldn’t be doing as much discretionary spending. However, he said layoffs weren’t planned.
“It’s critical to have the right leaders at the right time,” Agrawal said in the memo.
He also said that Twitter had been investing “aggressively” in growth since the pandemic began, but “did not hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence in these goals.”
The changes come as Musk is still intending to buy the social media giant for $44 billion. Musk has said he doesn’t care about the economics of the company.
He’s pitched a number of changes, including saying he wants to quintuple Twitter’s revenue by 2028 and grow its users to 931 million by then.
The company had 217 million users at the end of 2021.
PYMNTS wrote that Musk has also said he plans to undo the permanent ban of former President Donald Trump on Twitter, which was passed down in 2020 after several of his tweets were deemed to be inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.
See also: Musk Says He’ll Reverse Twitter’s ‘Morally Bad’ Ban on Trump
Musk said permanent bans undermined trust in social media and said there wouldn’t be anything more than temporary bans if he took over.
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