At around 9:00 a.m. on October 27, 2022, Parag Agrawal, the CEO of Twitter, summoned his leadership team into one of the large glass-doored conference rooms that lined the suite of offices on the seventh floor of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. After months of tension and worry, there was a grim clarity in the air—Musk was finally completing the acquisition.

Twitter’s top-ranking employees crammed into the room. Agrawal’s deputies were there, as well as vice presidents from finance, product, human resources, and sales. Even more executives dialed in on video conference from New York and around the globe, their faces tiling the screen at the end of the room. READ MORE