Elon Musk says he's cut about 80% of Twitter's staff
Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has laid off more than 6,000 people.
Hong Kong CNN
Elon Musk told the BBC late Tuesday that he has fired more than 6,00 people since taking control of Twitter.
Musk said in an interview that there are now only 1,500 people working at the social media platform, down from the 8,000 employees who were hired when he acquired the company. This represents 80% of all the staff at the company.
The billionaire CEO of Twitter told the British broadcaster that it can be a 'painful' experience at times.
When he joined the company, the second-richest man in world said that "drastic actions" were needed because of a negative cash flow situation of $3 billion. He estimated that Twitter (TWTR), which was facing a 'negative cash flow situation of $3 billion', had only 'four more months' to live.
This is not an uncaring [or] caring situation. Musk said that if the ship sinks then no one will have a job.
Musk bought Twitter last October for $44 billion.
He tried to back out of the agreement after initially offering to buy the company by April 2022. He cited concerns about the number of bot accounts. Since then, he has radically restructured Twitter. He fired top executives and cut jobs. He also implemented new policies regarding how accounts are verified.
He told the BBC that Twitter has now "roughly" broken even, and advertisers have returned to the platform.
Musk pledged that he would change the BBC's label from "government-funded" to "publicly-funded", after the BBC raised objections.
The designation was added at the weekend. The BBC protested, stating that it is and has always been independent.
The BBC said that the British public funded the organisation through the license fee.
Musk also commented on the US criticism of TikTok. He said that he wasn't a TikTok user, but he is usually "against things being banned."
He said: 'I suppose it would be good for Twitter if TikTok were banned. People would then spend more time using Twitter and less time using TikTok.'
"But even though it would help Twitter I would generally be against banning things."
Musk made jokes in the interview. He said that he 'nolonger was the CEO of Twitter,' but had been replaced by Floki, his Shiba Inu pet.