Elon Musk arrives at Twitter HQ with a sink as deal nears completion

The billionaire has until October 28 to finalise his purchase of the social media platform

Elon Musk, the world's richest person, turned up at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday with a kitchen sink.

“Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!” he tweeted, with the court-ordered deadline for his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform approaching.

Mr Musk and Twitter were given until October 28 to finalise the deal, which has rumbled on since April.

“Meeting a lot of cool people at Twitter today!” he also tweeted, after earlier changing his title in his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”.

Mr Musk told Twitter employees that he was not planning to cut thousands of jobs, Bloomberg reported.

The Washington Post reported last week that the billionaire told prospective investors in his proposed deal to buy Twitter that he planned to eliminate about 75 per cent of the platform's 7,500 workers, citing interviews and documents.

However, he denied the previously reported number in an address to employees at the Twitter office, Bloomberg said.

Mr Musk had tried to walk away from the deal to buy Twitter in May, alleging that the company understated the number of bot and spam accounts on the social media platform, which started a series of lawsuits between the two parties.

Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal hit back at Mr Musk's concerns and said spam accounts accounted for less 5 per cent of users. The digital platform locks millions of accounts each week that it suspects could be fake, he said.

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Earlier this month, Mr Musk reversed course and said he would proceed with the deal on original terms.

“I think on Friday, we will get an announcement that says that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter,” Adam Badawi, a University of California law professor at the Berkeley campus, told AFP.

“I'm excited about the Twitter situation,” Mr Musk said during a recent Tesla earnings call.

“I think it's an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now.”

Mr Musk indicated earlier this month that buying Twitter would speed up the creation of something he called “X, the everything app". He called the acquisition “an accelerant” to building a kind of multi-function app.

He has drawn parallels to so-called super apps that are widely used in parts of Asia.

Twitter shares will be suspended from trading on Friday, the New York Stock Exchange's website showed.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that equity investors, including Sequoia Capital, Binance, Qatar Investment Authority and others, had received the requisite paperwork for the financing commitment from Mr Musk's lawyers.

The deal's completion would mark an end to a lawsuit by Twitter, which, along with investors, now expects the deal to be completed on its original terms of $54.20 per share.