Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has commenced.
After months of negotiations, the Tesla boss has finally completed his $44 billion purchase of the social media platform, BBC News reports.
It's safe to say Musk has made a strong first impression on the company. He began his leadership by reportedly firing top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
According to a report by Sky News, Musk claims the top executives misled him over the number of spam accounts on Twitter. It has also been reported that Agrawal and Segal were in the company's San Francisco head office when the deal closed - and that they were escorted out of the building.
Newly crowned Twitter boss Musk celebrated his takeover fittingly with a tweet. "The bird is free," he wrote to his 110.5 million followers.
He also changed his Twitter bio to "Chief Twit" and marked his location as "Twitter HQ".
Musk first announced his intention to buy Twitter back in April, when he made an eye-watering $41 billion bid for the social media platform.
Since then, he has tussled with Twitter's top execs, who took him to court after he tried to rip up his initial offer.
However, the world's richest man made it clear he was set to close the deal earlier this week when he posted a video of himself striding into Twitter's headquarters carrying a sink.
"Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in," he captioned the clip.
He also shared a statement explaining why he had been so keen to purchase Twitter, claiming he did it "to help humanity".
"The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence," Musk wrote.
"That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love," he added.
