Twitter ousts two key leaders in wake of the Musk deal

In the wake of Elon Musk's deal to acquire Twitter, two pivotal company leaders are leaving and Twitter is hitting the brakes on hiring and some spending, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

Kayvon Beykpour, who oversees Twitter's consumer division, was fired from the company. Jay Sullivan, the company's current head of consumer product, will replace him. Bruce Falck, Twitter’s general manager for revenue, is also leaving. Twitter confirmed the departures to Protocol.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in the memo said the company made these decisions after struggling to meet audience and revenue growth goals.

“It’s critical to have the right leaders at the right time,” Agrawal wrote, according to The Times.

"The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision," Beykpour wrote in a Twitter thread Thursday. He said Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal asked him to leave the company, "letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction." Beykpour is currently on paternity leave.

"When all is said and done, it's the work that matters: We upgraded our ad serving, prediction, analytics, attribution, billing, API and many more systems, substantially improving our reliability and scalability," Falck wrote in a separate Twitter thread.

Protocol reached out to Beykpour for comment and will update this story with a response. A Twitter spokesperson told Protocol the company had no additional comment.

Their departures come as Elon Musk plans to acquire Twitter. Musk wants to take the company private and has told investors he wants to bolster Twitter's revenue by 2028. His plans for Twitter have sparked frustrations amongst employees, and more departures seem likely if the deal goes through. The company is reportedly preparing for what one worker called an "employee exodus" that could see people from marginalized backgrounds leave over criticisms of Musk's laissez faire view of content moderation.

Musk, who may become Twitter's CEO once the takeover is said and done, wants to move away from advertising, which is its current core business model. He reportedly wants to cut executive board pay and help people monetize from tweets, like ones that go viral.

Twitter is a special case given Musk's takeover, but other companies have looked to reduce or freeze hiring in the wake of dismal quarterly earnings and a stock market downturn. Meta implemented a hiring freeze for the rest of the year, and Uber is getting more selective on hires.

This is a developing story.