Elon Musk and his social media company, X (formerly Twitter), have agreed to settle a high-profile legal dispute with four former top Twitter executives over $128 million in unpaid severance.
The executives — former CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, and General Counsel Sean Edgett — filed a lawsuit in 2024 claiming Musk refused to pay their severance as “revenge.” They said the move came after Musk was forced to complete the $44 billion Twitter purchase in 2022, a deal he had previously tried to back out of.
All four executives were fired just hours after Musk officially took control of Twitter in October 2022 — one day before they were set to receive around $200 million in severance and stock options.
According to a court filing dated October 1, both sides have reached a settlement in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. While the exact terms remain confidential, the court has paused upcoming depositions — including Musk’s — to give the parties time to finalize the deal.
The lawsuit had cited portions of Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Musk, which claimed the billionaire deliberately sped up the closing of the Twitter acquisition so he could fire the executives “for cause” — preventing them from collecting severance. The former executives argued that the stated “cause” for termination was never backed by evidence.
Neither Musk nor representatives for X or the executives have commented on the settlement so far.
This isn’t the first time Musk’s company has faced such claims. In August 2025, X reached another settlement with a different group of ex-Twitter employees who also alleged they were owed hundreds of millions in severance pay.
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