GOING SUPER GREAT

Musk Likens Twitter to a Plane Crash to Justify ‘Crazy’ Cuts

The tech tycoon said his drastic action would help avoid a multibillion-dollar shortfall.

Elon Musk did not mince his words when describing Twitter’s money troubles. Speaking on a Twitter Space hosted Tuesday night, Musk claimed that the company—which he bought for $44 billion in October—was heading for a negative cash flow (where a company spends more than it makes) of around $3 billion. “That is why I spent the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy,” Musk said. “This company is like, basically, you are in a plane that is headed toward the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work.” Since taking over, Musk has taken a buzzsaw to Twitter’s payroll, laying off over half the company’s workforce, and spooked advertisers by creating concerns around content moderation on the platform. “I now think that Twitter will, in fact, be okay next year,” Musk said on the Space. Musk separately said on Tuesday that he will resign as Twitter CEO as soon as he finds someone “foolish enough to take the job.”