Memo: Elon Musk tells Twitter staff they can continue to receive stock and options despite the company being private, using a plan “much like that of SpaceX”
Context & Ripple Effects
When Elon Musk took Twitter private in late October, the move came with a switch to cash-based employee compensation after the NYSE delisting dissolved the board and merged the company into X Holdings. This memo walks that back within weeks: staff can keep accruing stock and options even without a public market, on a model borrowed from SpaceX, where private-company equity has long been the core of pay.
The catch is governance. A shareholders' agreement already gives Musk sole discretion over any IPO decision, so the value of these grants rests entirely on a liquidity event he alone controls — a structure the related coverage tests again when Twitter later offers four-year grants vesting after six months against a promised liquidity window.
First-order effects
- Twitter employees regain an equity component to their pay roughly two weeks after the takeover shifted them to cash bonuses, giving Musk a retention lever ahead of the workforce restructuring he had signaled.
Second-order effects
- Private stock without a listed price forces Twitter to set internal valuations for grants, and recruiting against public-company rivals now hinges on employees trusting a liquidity timeline that the shareholders' agreement places solely in Musk's hands.
Third-order effects
- If the SpaceX model holds, Musk's companies normalize long-term private operation with equity as deferred, founder-controlled compensation — a structure the coverage shows repeating at X, where by 2024 options are awarded based on employees' anticipated impact rather than tenure or role.
The trend: Musk is rebuilding Twitter's compensation around private-company equity on the SpaceX template, concentrating both grant decisions and any eventual exit in his own discretion.