Elon Musk No Longer Joining Twitter’s Board Of Directors

Just a short week after revealing that Elon Musk had purchased a major stake in Twitter and may join its board of directors, Twitter’s CEO shared that Musk has decided not to join the board and added “I believe this is for the best.”

Parag Agrawal shared the internal memo he distributed to Twitter staff this morning, which walked them through the timeline of the situation. He said that they “believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward.” This sentence loosely implies that Musk’s current behavior is not always in the best interests of the company, and maybe they hoped he would rein it in with a board seat.

From Agrawal’s memo, it seems like it was Musk’s decision entirely to step down from the board. He wrote, “Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board.”

Some have theorized that Musk is stepping down from the board of directors because board members’ ownership stakes in the company are capped at 14.9%. With plenty of staffers and other followers already listening to his every whim when he tweets something, Musk most likely realized he could continue buying up shares while still enjoying influence within the company that wouldn’t have been enhanced by a board seat.

He is also frequently critical of the site and likely would have chafed at having to reel back any commentary if asked to do so as a board member. Musk has been sharing a lot of polls and strange open questions about the site over the week. Most have been deleted, but there are still some memes and other questions remaining on his profile.

One of the last tweets, which Musk sent out the same day as he stepped down from the board, showed him responding to a list of highly-followed accounts saying that they “tweet rarely,” and asked his followers, “Is Twitter Dying?”