Elon Musk has disclosed that he has reduced Twitter's staff by more than 6,000 since taking over the company. In a rare interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Musk stated that the social media platform currently employs only 1,500 individuals, which is a significant decline from the almost 8,000 employees it had at the time of his acquisition. The reduction amounts to approximately 80% of the company's staff, and Musk admitted that it was not a pleasant experience and could be painful. In San Francisco, at Twitter's head office, the billionaire CEO informed the British broadcaster that "drastic action" was required when he joined because the company faced a "$3 billion negative cash flow situation." As a result, he estimated that Twitter only had "four months to live." Musk clarified that this was not a situation of being caring or uncaring. He explained that if the entire ship sank, no one would have a job.

Last October, Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. Initially, he had offered to take over the company in April 2022 but later tried to back out of the deal due to concerns about the number of bot accounts on the platform. Since then, Musk has made significant changes to Twitter, including firing top executives, cutting jobs, and implementing new policies for verifying and labeling user accounts. He informed the BBC that Twitter is now "roughly" breaking even, and advertisers are returning to the platform.

Additionally, Musk promised to revise the label applied to the BBC from "government-funded" to "publicly-funded" after the broadcaster objected to the designation that was added over the weekend. The BBC had stated that it has always been independent.

At the time, the BBC had stated that they were funded by the British public through the license fee.

Musk also shared his thoughts on the US government's scrutiny of TikTok, stating that although he did not use the Chinese-owned app, he was generally opposed to banning things. He jokingly added that banning TikTok could benefit Twitter, but he was still against the banning of anything.

During the interview, Musk made some humorous comments, claiming that he was no longer Twitter's CEO and had been replaced by his Shiba Inu pet dog named Floki.

According to Elon Musk, Twitter has reduced its workforce by approximately 80%.