Of 8,000 Twitter employees, only 1,500 remain

After the waves of layoffs, Twitter has under the new owner Elon Musk only about 1,500 employees – after almost 8,000 before. Musk gave the numbers in an interview with the British broadcaster BBC on Wednesday.

The tech billionaire had around 44 billion dollars (around 40 billion euros) last October, the number of employees was roughly halved as a first step.

Sales halved after takeover

It was “painful” to fire so many people, but without radical ones austerity measures Twitter only had “4 months to live,” Musk said. Before the takeover, Twitter did almost all of its business advertising revenue For example, when companies pay to have their tweets appear in users’ news feeds.

Musk’s purchase was followed by a churn of advertisers who feared a negative environment for their tweets under the controversial entrepreneur. Sales have halved, as Musk admitted at the time. At the same time, Twitter must pay interest for around $12 billion in loans pay for the takeover.

No exact numbers public

Musk now said in the BBC interview that advertisers have returned or are planning to. There are more ads again and Twitter only has minimal losses, he added, without naming numbers. Since the company is no longer in the stock exchange is listed, it no longer has to publish quarterly reports.

After the purchase announcement in spring 2022, Musk tried to get out of the deal relatively quickly. He referred to an allegedly high number of automated Bot-Accounts, which means that the price he proposed is no longer justified. The $44 billion was a hefty surcharge on the then market value from Twitter.

Court would have forced Musk to buy Twitter

The Twitter management, which initially resisted the takeover attempt but was committed to the interests of the shareholders after the agreement with Musk, dragged him to court. When asked if he Twitter purchase in the end only because a judge would have forced him to do it anyway, Musk said in the BBC interview: “Yes, that’s why.”