Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has declined to join the board of Twitter after becoming the social media company’s biggest shareholder earlier this month.
“Elon Musk has decided not to join our board,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said in a statement Sunday.
He was appointed to the board on Tuesday. This was “contingent on a background check and formal acceptance,” Agrawal’s statement said.
His appointment was to become effective on Saturday, the statement said, however, Musk “shared that same morning he will no longer be joining the board.”
“I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal wrote. “We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not.”
Twitter will remain open to Musk’s input, Agrawal added.
Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. earlier this month. Since doing so, he has posted a series of suggestions for the site, posing questions about new features and areas of concern.
On Monday, he polled users on whether they wanted an edit button. The following day, the company announced it was testing the feature. And in a series of tweets late Saturday, he said users of the company’s Twitter Blue premium subscription service, which costs $2.99 a month, should receive an authentication check mark.
That feature is typically reserved for accounts of public interest that have been verified as authentic.
The billionaire is an outspoken Twitter user, often stirring controversy and even market movements with his posts on the site. In 2018, he tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 a share when funding was not secured, driving up the company’s stock price and ultimately leading to a $40 million SEC settlement and mandate that his future tweets be pre-approved. He is still tied up in litigation over that matter.
