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Musk, in an interview with BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces,
said Twitter has about 1,500 employees now, a sharp decline from
"just under 8,000 staff members" it had before he took it over
in October.
Twitter has been marked by chaos and uncertainty since the $44
billion acquisition by Musk, as its layoffs have also included
many engineers responsible for fixing and preventing service
outages, sources told Reuters.
Last week, Twitter suffered a bug that prevented thousands of
users from accessing links, its sixth major outage since the
beginning of the year, according to internet watchdog group
NetBlocks.
Musk acknowledged some glitches, including recent outages, but
said they have not lasted very long.
He says Twitter was in a $3 billion negative cash flow situation
and had to take drastic actions, referring to its large-scale
layoffs.
"We could be cash-flow positive this quarter if things go well,"
he said in the interview that attracted more than 3 million
listeners, adding the company currently has all-time high user
numbers.
Twitter has been hit by a massive decline in advertising since
his acquisition.
Musk had said that was due to the cyclical nature of ad spending
and some of which was "political." He said on Wednesday most of
its advertisers have returned.
The billionaire, who also runs electronic car maker Tesla and
rocket company SpaceX, said he has no one in mind to succeed him
as Twitter chief executive.
Musk has faced scrutiny from Tesla investors about the amount of
time he spends running the social media platform and had
previously said the end of this year would be "good timing" to
find a new Twitter CEO.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and
Christian Schmollinger)
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