Elon Musk wants to fire nearly 75 percent of Twitter staff after takeover

Elon Musk may want to lay off about three-quarters of the workforce following the Twitter takeover. Currently, about 7,500 people work for the social media platform. The Tesla CEO would have told potential investors that he wanted to cut costs in this way.

The Washington Post reports Elon Musk has told potential investors that he plans to lay off nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s workforce if the acquisition goes through. Of the roughly 7,500 workers, “just over 2,000” would remain, according to The Washington Post, meaning about 5,500 workers could leave.

If the takeover of the social medium ultimately does not go through, the current management of Twitter also wants to reduce labor costs, namely by $ 800 million by the end of 2023. This would involve the layoff of about 25 percent of the staff. In addition, the company planned to make infrastructure cuts, including the data centers that run Twitter. These cuts were paused because of the takeover deal.

In April of this year, Musk made a $44 billion takeover offer on Twitter, which was accepted by the social medium. The Tesla CEO then wanted to cancel the deal, because many bot accounts would be active on the platform and Twitter would not have been transparent enough about this. In the end Twitter announced that Musk still wants to stick to the deal, for the original acquisition amount. Twitter and Musk are expected to complete the acquisition by Friday, October 28.