Even though he is buying the company, Musk still trashed it. He became an owner on Thursday.
The world's richest man opened up about his plans for the service in an hourlong question-and-answer session with the employees. He talked about everything from growth, potential layoffs, anonymity, Chinese apps, the existence of alien life-forms, and even the nature of the social networking site.
The New York Times listened to Mr. Musk's speech in the meeting, which was streamed to employees.
He hoped that the service could help humankind better understand the nature of the universe.
The meeting, which Mr. Musk participated in from his cellphone, suggested that he was going to close the acquisition. His intentions had been in doubt in recent weeks when the billionaire, who also runs the electric carmakerTesla and the rocket companySpaceX, repeatedly raised questions about the fake accounts in an apparent pretext for potentially ending or revising the deal.
The purchase of Mr. Musk's company has been on hold since April. He criticized some of the executives. His main source of wealth plummeted after he made his inflammatory comments.
The antics from Mr. Musk had left investors, the company's employees and others guessing as to what he would do. The stock price of the company is $37. The company insists that the deal is on track and that it has been sharing information with Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk made it clear to employees that he had grand ambitions, even though he didn't directly address it.
Mr. Musk said he wanted to expand the service to more than a billion users. It would be four times the number of users. He said that he was at both Musk's company and the social networking site.
Some warned that Mr. Musk might change his mind about completing the deal.
A professor of corporate governance at a law school thinks he is operating on two tracks. He might want to lower the price or cancel the deal. He would like more investors if the deal goes through.
She said that talking to employees of the social networking site might give reassurances to potential investors. I don't know if that's his Plan B or his Plan A.
Mr. Musk didn't reply to a request for comment.
The session that Mr. Musk was supposed to speak to the employees of did not happen. The San Francisco-based company started collecting questions from employees on its internal messaging system. The meeting starts at 9 a.m. San Francisco time started a few minutes late, with Parag Agrawal thanking Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk answered questions about work from home. He told workers at the two companies that they should be in the office for 40 hours a week. The employees have mostly worked from home in the coronaviruses epidemic.
Mr. Musk told his employees that they could work from home if they wanted. He hoped that people would go into the office more in the future because of the lack of in-office participation.
Mr. Musk dodged the question of whether there would be layoffs at the micro-blogging site.
He said that costs are over revenue. That's not a good situation.
He talked about the possibility of extraterrestrial life at one point, but it was not clear where he got the information. He said that the Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok are not boring and that they are aspirational.
Payments technology was one of the improvements Mr. Musk said he wanted to improve. It would be great if users could send money back and forth through the service.
The deal was a big one. Musk, the world's wealthiest man, capped what seemed an unlikely attempt by the famously volatile billionaire to buy the micro-messaging service for over forty billion dollars. The deal took place here.
The first offer. Mr. Musk made an offer worth more than 40 billion dollars for the company, which he wanted to make a private company.
In the past, Mr. Musk has said that he believes the company's potential is not being utilized. He wants to take the company private and make significant changes to how the service is run.
Some employees have differing opinions about Mr. Musk. Some people are concerned about his politics and use of social networking sites.
In a memo that was sent to employees on Thursday, it was said that they were concerned about the chief executive's public behavior and how it reflected poorly on employees.
According to a letter obtained by The Times, Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a constant source of distraction and embarrassment. As the company's C.E.O. and most prominent spokesman, Musk is seen as the face of the company.
They were worried about how Mr. Musk would handle policing the platform.
He emphasized on Thursday that he would not allow criminal acts to be carried out on the network in order to make it more inclusive. He didn't want to make people use their real names on the service and he also didn't want to make them use pseudonyms.
The employees who pointed to Mr. Musk's reputation as an innovator said they were happy after the meeting. They said that Mr. Musk was not hostile and seemed to have a vision for the product. One employee wrote in an internal message that "if you took a drink each time he answered a question, you'd be terribly sober at the end of this."
When Mr. Musk took over the company, he wasn't sure if he would become the CEO. He said he wasn't a traditional C.E.O. and pointed to his title as "technoking". He noted that he had many ideas for product updates and how the service should evolve, and that he would let others know about them.
Mr. Musk expects that they will listen to him.
Ryan Mac reported.
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