Silver Lake invests $1 bn in Twitter, Dorsey remains CEO

After a week which seems like investor Elliott Management might try to force out Jack Dorsey from his position as CEO of Twitter to help boost the social platform’s flagging growth. But now Dorsey is safe.

Twitter has announced that it has received $1 billion investment from Silver Lake. As a part of the deal, it has entered into an agreement with Elliott Management which holds about four percent of Twitter to use that investment plus cash on hand toward a $2 billion share repurchase program.

Two new people is joining Twitter’s Board of Directors, Silver Lake’s Egon Durban and Elliott’s Jesse Cohn. The company said it is also seeking a third person to join as part of the agreement. It is also committed itself to a plan to grow its mDAU (a special metric Twitter uses for “monetizable” daily active users) at 20% or more, with revenue growth accelerating on a year-over-year basis.

In any event, the news of the investment and subsequent deal put an end — at least for now — to the possibility of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey being removed as CEO of the company.

The threat was real enough that Dorsey took to the stage (and Twitter) at an investor conference to directly address some of the criticisms that he faced from investors and the public over how he manages the company. (Not all were convinced.) There were rumors that supporters were closing ranks in defense of Dorsey, and it seems that this is an attempt at mitigating a full-scale change (at least for now).

Patrick Pichette, who is the Independent Director of the Twitter board, will become the chair of the committee to find another board member. “Twitter has undergone remarkable change over the last several years,” he said in a statement.

Whether or not Pichette is one of the tacit supporters of the current leadership status quo, it seems that for now investors are willing to give Dorsey a shot, provided there is more active input from board members who are investors.