Elon Musk Says Twitter is Now “Roughly Breaking Even”

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said this week that the company isn’t doing as badly as it seems. In an interview with the BBC that was broadcasted live on Twitter, Musk said that Twitter is “roughly breaking even” after the company laid off 80% of its workforce and advertisers are starting to come back.

“We could be profitable, or to be more precise, cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well. I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back,” Musk said in the interview.

The exec also admitted that some of his tweets may have pushed users and advertisers away. “Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes. I think I should not tweet after 3am,” Musk added.

Even though Twitter went from close to 8,000 employees to just 1,500 in just a couple of months, Musk said that Twitter usage is up and that “the site works.” The brutal layoffs certainly made a lot of headlines, but Musk had quite an unapologetic answer about that. “I wouldn’t say it was uncaring… If the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job,” the exec said.

Musk also admitted during the interview that he only went through the trouble of acquiring Twitter because he didn’t want a judge to force him to honor his acquisition offer. Twitter sued Musk back in July 2022 after the exec tried to abandon the deal, which would have forced him to pay a $1 billion termination fee.

Nearly six months after the acquisition, the future of the platform still seems up in the air and you have to wonder if it was all worth it. According to Musk, the “pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party.”