Twitter tells worried employees their vested shares will be paid in coming days
The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
After Elon Musk closed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last week, employees at the company braced for job cuts. Some told CNBC they were worried about losing their equity compensation if Musk sent them packing before their shares vested the first week of November.
Musk and Tesla have been sued repeatedly over employees’ claims that they were fired just before their shares vested, depriving them of compensation.
However, it appears that the current tranche of stock-based compensation for many Twitter employees, who were there before Musk took over, will get paid out after all.
According to employees at the company and internal communications viewed by CNBC, newly vesting shares are expected to be paid in the first half of November, starting as early as Nov. 4. Employees said they were reassured by managers that the company’s payroll department was working on processing their vested stock.
Tech companies are known for paying a high percentage of their compensation through stock awards, and Twitter has been notably reliant on equity payouts. In the first six months of 2022, Twitter recorded a stock-based compensation expense of $459.5 million, up from $289.1 million during the same period a year earlier. That’s close to 20% of Twitter’s revenue for the quarter.
Musk has indicated many times in recent months that Twitter is overstaffed and that one of his first moves would be to make dramatic reductions. He’s already gotten rid of top executives, starting with the CEO, CFO, policy chief and other high-ranking leaders and their direct reports. Musk reportedly fired them “for cause,” potentially to avoid paying millions of dollars in so-called golden parachutes.
It’s not clear whether other executives and employees who were fired or who resigned after Musk bought the company will be compensated for shares about to vest. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk was scheduled to hold an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees on Nov. 2. The meeting was canceled unexpectedly, employees told CNBC.
The New York Times reported that layoffs at Twitter could take place before Nov. 1, a date when many employees were scheduled to receive stock grants.
Musk responded, “this is false,” in a tweet on Friday, though he didn’t provide any evidence or further details.
Twitter employees had some reason to be concerned about their equity, given the company is now in private hands, and because Musk has a history of apparently trying to avoid payouts.
According to 2009 deposition transcripts from a high-profile Tesla lawsuit, Martin Eberhard v. Elon Musk et al, a former Tesla Chief Information Officer named Gene Glaudell said Musk and other Tesla executives at that time, “did not want to say in public that Tesla was making cuts for financial reasons.” Rather, they tried to attribute the cuts to “performance and management accountability.”
In a lawsuit after that, about 50 former Tesla employees claimed the company had terminated them without paying equity compensation that they’d been promised in job offer letters. The former Tesla employees won, but the electric vehicle maker was able to overturn the decision later on appeal.
Musk is the richest person on the planet, with most of his wealth derived from Tesla stock via the perforam and a historically large compensation package that the company has granted him through the years.
Some unhappy Tesla shareholders are slated to take Musk and the Tesla board to court this month over his 2018 CEO compensation package. They allege that it was reckless to give away so much of the company’s stock to Musk, and that the pay package failed to achieve its stated purpose of getting him to focus on Tesla’s business.
Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who encouraged Musk and Twitter to settle their differences and complete the $44 billion transaction they agreed to in April, is deciding the case.
Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.
Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.
The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.
The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.
In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.
Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.
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