Book reveals that Elon Musk’s acquisition of X was driven by Parag Agrawal’s refusal to close a Twitter account.
In a major revelation about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s much-talked-about acquisition of Twitter (Now X), it has been revealed that Musk began trying to acquire the microblogging platform after former CEO Parag Agrawal denied his request to shut down the handle that tracked the location of the billionaire’s private jet @ElonJet.
The revelation was written in a book written by Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner titled “Battle of the Bird.” Interestingly, the information was released after Wagner’s employer released the first excerpt from the book. The book is scheduled to be published on February 20.
According to an excerpt published in the book, Elon Musk first contacted Parag Agrawal in January 2022 regarding the account – @ElonJet, which is run by American programmer Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida.
In particular, Sweeney tracks information about the private jets of several notable people, such as former US President Donald Trump, popular singer Taylor Swift, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, through multiple accounts. Swift has even threatened to sue the student.
After Parag Agrawal denied the Tesla CEO’s request to remove the account managed by Swwney, Musk began buying shares in Twitter, which led him to talk to the platform’s founder, Jack Dorsey.
Musk initially sought a position on the board before agreeing to buy the social media platform outright. He then paid a whopping $44 billion to buy Twitter in October 2022.
Days after his Twitter purchase, Musk fired Agarwal, the tech giant’s first Indian CEO, and others.
The @ElonJet handle was also removed from Twitter after Musk landed a deal with the microblogging platform. However, Sweeney continues to post travel information about Musk’s plane on other social networking sites.
