Elon Musk’s relationship with Twitter boss Agrawal was ‘bleak’

Newly published messages between Elon Musk and the Twitter boss, Parag Agrawal show how their relationship appeared to be blossoming before it dramatically soured, with the billionaire Tesla CEO tweeting: Is Twitter dying? A series of text messages, revealed in a Delaware court filing, suggest the two men were for a short period of bonding, including over their shared love of engineering, after Agrawal got in touch with him weeks before Musk announced his offer to buy Twitter.

The communications give an insight into the careful negotiations that were privately taking place. At the time, the billionaire had invested in shares in the social media company and suggested ideas for its improvement or suggested starting his own social network in public.

It comes ahead of a high stakes trial starting on October 17th, which will decide whether the world s richest man will have to complete the $44 billion acquisition of the social media company he has agreed to. Musk could be deposed as soon as next week.

Elon great to be connected directly. Agrawal wrote on March 27 that he would love to chat. The filings show that Musk liked the message and they arranged to meet at around 8 pm. A few days later, they had arranged to meet for dinner near San Jose on March 31 as the momentum around the deal accelerated.

A message to Musk from Bret Taylor, chair of Twitter's board, said the proposed location at an Airbnb near the airport was the weirdest place he had had a meeting recently. Agrawal said Agrawal was super excited and that he was in a few days after it was announced that Musk would join the board. When the news of Tesla CEO joining the board became public, Musk received messages from figures including podcaster Joe Rogan, who asked if he would liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob, and gave advice that they may or may not choose to follow.

On April 5, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's former chief executive, described Agrawal as an incredible engineer to Musk but claimed the company's board was terrible Two days later Agrawal and Musk appeared to be getting on well, planning their working relationship.

Musk wrote for 20 years that I wrote heavy duty software. I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager MBA types. Agrawal responded: "In our next convo, treat me like an engineer instead of a CEO and let's see where we get to." On the same day, Musk texted Agrawal saying that he had a lot of ideas but to let him know if he was pushing too hard. Two days later, on April 9th, came Musk's fateful tweet in which he publicly suggested the platform was floundering souring their apparently developing relations.

Agrawal questioned Musk about his public criticism of Twitter in the texts and described his comments as unhelpful and an internal distraction. What did you do this week? Musk replied less than a minute later. I am not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private. On April 11th, Agrawal announced that Musk would not be joining the board. Three days after that, Twitter revealed that Musk offered to buy the company for $44 billion, a deal that Twitter agreed to on April 25.