Twitter employees may be in for really bad news and the biggest shock in the coming months. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly planning to lay off nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, according to a report from the Washington Post, citing interviews and documents obtained by the media outlet.
According to the report, Musk told investors in his $44 billion takeover deal to buy the social giant “that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.”
Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter’s spam and health metrics and now CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI, told Washington Post that the impact would likely be immediately felt by millions of users if Musk follows through on the layoff plan.
He added that while he believed Twitter was overstaffed, the 75 percent cut was “unimaginable” and “would put Twitter’s users at risk of hacks and exposure to offensive material such as child pornography.”
“It would be a cascading effect,” he said, “where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.”
Last week, a Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has until October 28 to complete his acquisition of Twitter if he wants to avoid a trial, granting Musk a slight reprieve.
The ruling came a few days after Musk shocked the world when he announced he was ready to proceed with the $44 billion takeover deal to end all litigation in order to close the deal.
On April 25, Twitter agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk for $44 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing the proposed transaction.
The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter. Musk needed to use his Tesla stock to raise $21 billion in equity to fund his takeover of the social media giant.
