Elon Musk has settled a $128 million lawsuit brought by four of Twitter’s former senior executives, now part of his rebranded company X. The case revolved around severance payments the executives said Musk withheld after taking control of the platform in 2022.
Fired executives claim Musk broke contracts
The group, which included former CEO Parag Agrawal, said Musk dismissed them without cause and refused to pay the severance guaranteed in their contracts. In a court filing, their lawyers wrote, “The parties have reached a settlement, and the settlement requires certain conditions to be met in the near term.” The terms of the deal were not made public. The lawsuit, filed last year, is one of several legal challenges over unpaid severance following Musk’s takeover.
No public statements from lawyers
Attorneys for both sides declined to comment on the outcome. The four executives—Agrawal, former chief financial officer Ned Segal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and former general counsel Sean Edgett—argued that they were each owed a year’s salary and stock awards under a long-standing severance plan. They accused Musk of systematically avoiding payments owed to employees forced out after the acquisition.
Earlier settlement for laid-off employees
In August, Musk and X also settled another lawsuit involving about 6,000 former employees who said they were owed $500 million in severance. Musk had purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion after first attempting to abandon the deal. Once the sale closed, he immediately fired the top executives and laid off more than half of the company’s workforce.
Anger over forced purchase led to conflict
The executives claimed Musk was angry about being compelled to complete the $44 billion acquisition. They said he falsely accused them of misconduct to justify firing them and avoiding their severance. The settlement brings an end to another major legal fight in Musk’s rocky stewardship of X, a platform that has undergone drastic changes under his rule.
