Multibillionaire Elon Musk will meet Twitter employees this week for the first time after initiating his $44 billion buyout offer to the social media company.
A source informed The Guardian the virtual meeting is set for Thursday, and Musk will answer questions directly from Twitter employees, citing an email to staff from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
The announcement comes after Twitter indicated last week that a shareholder vote on the sale would take place in early August, according to Business Insider.
Musk will attend the company's all-hands conference this week, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed.
Twitter Employees Are Concerned on the Tycoon's Attitude
Several Twitter employees have raised fears that Musk's erratic behavior could destabilize the social media company's business and cause financial harm since his takeover pursuit, per a report from Fox Business.
Agrawal calmed employee fury at a company-wide meeting in April when employees sought explanations about how managers prepared to handle a mass exodus spurred by Musk.
Elon Musk said earlier this month that if Twitter failed to provide data on the number of spam or fraudulent accounts on the site, he would walk out of the agreement.
Twitter maintains that spam and fake accounts account for less than 5% of its users, but Musk believes the number is far greater.
The tech mogul stated in a letter to regulators that he had the right to measure spam accounts himself. After declaring the sale "on hold" until more information, the letter formalized a dispute that had been simmering for weeks.
Analysts believe Musk is attempting to renegotiate the price or potentially walk away from the agreement because of the difficulty, per BBC. They claimed that his decision to bring the issue up on social media was unorthodox, making it impossible to discern his sincerity.
Musk responded with a poo emoji after Agrawal defended the company's process for spotting bogus accounts in a series of tweets.
Twitter Agreed To Musk's Demands for Internal Data
According to a report from The Washington Post, a reliable source informed the news outlet that Twitter's board plans to comply with Elon Musk's demands for internal data by offering access to the full "firehose," the massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted per day.
The move is intended to end a standoff with the tycoon, who has threatened to walk away from his $44 billion plan to buy Twitter unless the business gives him access to data he claims is needed to assess the number of fraudulent users on the platform.
Per a letter addressed to Twitter on Monday, Musk's legal team believes that the data stream is critical for assessing the amount of spam and bot activity on its platform, a statistic that might affect the company's ad revenue.
At the close of New York trading on Monday, the company's shares were trading at $37.03, significantly below Musk's offer price of $54.20.
Musk, regarded as the world's richest man, has pledged more than $33 billion of his wealth, the majority of which comes from his Tesla holdings. However, the company's share values plunged as a global sell-off of tech firms has roiled the stock market.
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