Elon Musk reportedly plans to lay off 75% of Twitter’s staff if he takes over company

Elon Musk has told potential investors that he plans to eliminate nearly 75% of Twitter’s staff as part of his deal to take over the social media company, the Washington Post reported.

Jobs are expected to be cut regardless of who owns the company, according to the report. The news of Musk’s plans, should he ultimately go through with the deal, comes at a difficult moment for Twitter. The company said in July that it had already “significantly slowed hiring” amid a wider economic downturn in the tech industry, where many companies have announced recent hiring freezes and layoffs.

On Thursday night, Bloomberg reported that an internal memo circulated by Twitter said there were “no plans for any company-wide layoffs”. Meanwhile, according to Insider, the acquisition drama with Musk has resulted in low morale, leading employees to quit. Twitter has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Tesla founder for months after Musk tried to walk away from the $44bn takeover, before deciding this month that he would go through with it all after all.

Human resources staff at the social media company have told employees that they were not planning for mass layoffs, but documents showed extensive plans to push out staff and cut down infrastructure costs were already in place before Musk offered to buy the company, the Washington Post reported.

But while Twitter’s current ownership planned to lay off 25% of their staff by the end of next year, the report revealed Musk wants to reduce Twitter’s 7,500 employees down to a “skeleton staff” of around 2,000 people.