Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has completed his $44 billion (£38.1 billion) buyout of Twitter, according to US media and one investor in the company.
In an apparent allusion to the deal’s completion, he tweeted “the bird is liberated.”
Several top executives, including the CEO, Parag Agrawal, are said to have been sacked.
It concludes a story in which Twitter went to court to hold the multibillionaire to the terms of a takeover transaction that he had attempted to avoid.
Twitter has not officially announced the acquisition, but one early investor in the startup informed the BBC that it was finalized.
Musk joined the charity Mars Society in early 2001 and explored funding ideas for a plant growing chamber on Mars.
In October of that year, he flew to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to purchase reconditioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying greenhouse payloads into orbit.
He met with NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras, but Musk was perceived as inexperienced, and the party returned to the United States empty-handed.
The crew returned to Russia in February 2002 with Mike Griffin (President of In-Q-Tel) to seek for three ICBMs. They met with Kosmotras again and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk declined.
He instead chose to develop a firm that could construct inexpensive rockets. Musk started SpaceX in May 2002 with $100 million of his own money and became the company’s CEO and Chief Engineer.