Elon Musk's X settles $128 million lawsuit with Twitter executives

Elon Musk's social media platform X has settled a $128 million lawsuit with four former Twitter executives over their promised severance package.

On Wednesday, Musk's X settled with the company's former Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, and General Counsel Sean Edgett. All four worked at the company when it was still known as Twitter and joined prior to Musk's takeover.

The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

The four former executives were all immediately fired by Musk after he acquired the company in October 2022. They filed the lawsuit in March 2024. The former Twitter executives claimed in the lawsuit that they were owed a combined $128 million contractually obligated severance package, with Agrawal, Segal, Gadde, and Edgett entitled to $57.4 million, $44.5 million, $20 million, and $6.8 million respectively. The severance included the executives' salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options, according to the suit.

Musk refused to payout the executives after firing them, accusing them of misconduct. The four claimed the misconduct charges were false and Musk had fired them in retaliation for Twitter's lawsuit forcing Musk to buy the company after he tried to back out from his initial April 2022 offer.

"Because Musk decided he didn’t want to pay Plaintiffs’ severance benefits, he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision," the complaint read. "He claimed in his termination letters that each Plaintiff committed 'gross negligence' and 'willful misconduct' without citing a single fact in support of this claim."

The lawsuit also included details from Musk's authorized biography where he was quoted as saying he would "hunt every single one of" the former Twitter executives "till the day they die."

Earlier this year, Musk's X also settled a $500 million class action lawsuit from rank-and-file former Twitter employees who were also denied severance pay by the billionaire.