Musk’s Spam Frustration Was ‘Confusing’ to Ex-Twitter Executives

Two former top executives at Twitter Inc. sought to beat back Elon Musk’s narrative at a jury trial that they lied to him about the makeup of the platform’s user base when he was purchasing the company in 2022.

Parag Agrawal, who was chief executive officer, and Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, took the witness stand Friday in an investor trial over Musk’s tumultuous $44 billion buyout of the company.

But the two men, both of whom were fired right as Musk took control of the social networking platform, offered few detailed recollections of the chaotic weeks surrounding his attempt to back out of the deal and stopped short of criticizing his behavior.

Agrawal was asked for his reaction to Musk’s May 13, 2022, tweet at the heart of the case stating the purchase agreement was “temporarily on hold.” Testifying Friday in jeans and a t-shirt, Agrawal was brief, saying, “It did not make sense to me.”

Segal, who testified most of Thursday, also was concise. “I was displeased,” was his only reaction to another tweet from Musk blasting Twitter’s methodology for counting how much of its user base was fake accounts, or bots.

The investors claim Musk’s public bashing of the company was actually an effort to drive down the stock price and gain himself a better bargaining position.

The two days of testimony from Agrawal and Segal pushed back on Musk’s own recollection that he was always committed to the deal, but genuinely believed that Twitter had lied to him about the percentage of spam accounts.

Musk told the jury he was “stunned” that Agrawal, Segal and other Twitter executives could not provide more details about the bot count methodology during their first meeting on May 6 after signing the acquisition agreement. Musk said the bot issue was important, likening it to investigating a termite infestation while purchasing a house.

Agrawal and Segal both testified that the bots were one of close to 20 topics discussed at the meeting, and didn’t stand out as a particularly significant issue at the time. In a follow-up meeting a week later, bots were a key focus of the discussion, but Musk chose not to attend.

A few days later, Musk claimed while speaking at a conference that bots made up 20% of the company’s user base. In his own series of tweets, Agrawal outlined Twitter’s methodology for determining bot accounts, which he said made up less than 5% of total users.

Musk then responded to Agrawal with a poop emoji.

On the stand, Agrawal was again curt when asked about that tweet. “I don’t remember, but it was confusing,” Agrawal testified.

Agrawal and Segal, along with others, sued Musk for allegedly stiffing them on $128 million in promised severance after he terminated them. The executives reached a confidential settlement last year.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Isaiah Poritz in San Francisco at iporitz@bloomberg.net;
Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sarah Frier at sfrier1@bloomberg.net

Stephanie Gleason, Peter Blumberg

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