San Francisco: Elon Musk is defending his massive cost-cutting at Twitter as necessary for the social media platform to survive next year, due in part to debt payments tied to his $44 billion takeover of the company.
“This company is like, basically, you’re in a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” Musk told a late-night audience on a Twitter Spaces call Tuesday.
That’s after Elon Musk said earlier on Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.
Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an online poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
Musk said Tuesday night that he “spent the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy” and trying to build a stronger paid subscription service because otherwise Twitter might be operating with $3 billion in negative cash flow next year. He in part blamed the $12.5 billion in debt tied to his April agreement to buy the company, as well as the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate hikes.
