Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is “willing to go to war” to make Elon Musk follow through on his $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant amid reports that the deal could be in jeopardy over the site’s handling of spam and “bot” accounts.

After the market closed, Musk disclosed in a SEC filing that he was terminating the deal.

Parag Agrawal, who assumed the chief executive job last fall after company co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down from the role, is reportedly starting to “come out fighting” after Musk repeatedly criticized the company that he has committed to buy and take private.

“Parag wants to swing back more and is being more aggressive internally,” a former Twitter executive told Financial Times.

“It seems Twitter is willing to go to war to make this deal happen.”

Agrawal would be due to receive a payout of $42 million under the current terms of the buyout. As with a handful of other Twitter executives, Agrawal’s payout would be triggered by a so-called “change in control” clause in their contracts which kicks in if either of them is terminated within 12 months of new ownership assuming the helm of the company.

Shares of Twitter fell 5% on Wall Street on Friday, closing at $36.81 a share — well short of the $54.20 a share price at which Musk agreed to buy out stakeholders and take the firm private.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk, the Tesla CEO whose estimated fortune of $223 billion makes him the world’s richest person, could walk away from the agreement because he thinks he doesn’t have enough information to determine the levels of fake accounts.

Musk has claimed Twitter’s spam accounts are not verifiable — even after the social media giant in early June gave in to Musk’s demands to provide info on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.

It was also reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Twitter laid off a third of its talent acquisition team.

The company had recently announced a hiring freeze as the tech sector remains in the throes of an economic downturn.

Agrawal, the 38-year-old Indian-born Stanford graduate, spent four years as Twitter’s chief technology officer before succeeding Dorsey.

According to FT, his lack of executive experience and his inclination to shun public appearances has fueled skepticism among board members that he has the chops to take on the charismatic Musk.

Since the $44 billion deal was announced earlier this year, Musk has publicly needled Twitter over its content moderation policy as well as its alleged failure to adequately clamp down on fake accounts.

In private, Agrawal has been much more aggressive in pushing back on those claims, FT is reporting.

The public perception of Agrawal is that he is more of an “unknown quantity.”

“Parag feels more like an engineer who’s been put in charge of a product than someone who has a vision,” an ad agency executive told FT.

“Twitter needs a leader who’s going to stand up and make Twitter a presence in the market.”

In May, Agrawal took to Twitter to defend the company’s efforts to stamp out spam and bot accounts — prompting Musk to respond with a poop emoji.

Despite the back-and-forth, Agrawal and Musk remain on cordial terms, according to FT. Both men reportedly see eye to eye on the need to diversify the company’s revenue streams as well as to scale back its content moderation policy.

Twitter, perhaps anticipating the Musk news, had a call early Thursday with select members of the media in which it said it removed 1 million spam accounts a day.

The company also reiterated that fake users represent less than 5% of its user base, like it says in its quarterly earnings.

Musk is scheduled to speak Saturday at the Allen & Co. Sun Valley conference in Idaho, where there was an expectation he would talk about the Twitter deal, a source said.