Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, laid out a dire financial forecast late Thursday, saying the social-media company could lose billions of dollars and that bankruptcy cannot be ruled out, according to multiple reports.
Musk held an impromptu all-hands meeting Thursday afternoon, hours after sending a companywide email warning of “difficult times ahead” and ordering the end of Twitter’s work-from-anywhere policy.
According to The Information, Musk told Twitter employees at the all-hands that the company could lose “several billion” dollars next year, and said “bankruptcy is not out of the question.” Earlier this week, Musk disclosed nearly $4 billion in recent sales of his Tesla
TSLA,
shares; on Thursday, Musk said that was done to “save” Twitter, according to the New York Times.
Additionally, two of Twitter’s last remaining top executives are said to be leaving the company. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, and Robin Wheeler, the head of ad sales, are out, according to a report by The Verge. Both appeared in a Twitter Spaces meeting earlier this week to try to assuage advertisers’ concerns.
Musk reportedly said the company’s future largely rests with the success of Twitter Blue, which this week started awarding blue checkmarks to users who pay $8 a month, creating immediate havoc with fake accounts impersonating verified users.
When asked by an employee Thursday how he expects Twitter to deal with severe attrition — Musk laid off half the company last week — Musk said “we all need to be more hardcore,” according to the New York Times.
Musk also reiterated his return-to-work order from earlier in the day: “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted,” Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer reported.
