Multiple outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, reported Thursday that Twitter would lay off around 30% of its talent acquisition team, fewer than 100 employees. A Twitter spokesman confirmed the layoffs to CNN, saying the cut was made to reflect changing business needs. Twitter said in May — just weeks after Musk agreed to buy the company — that it would stop most hiring and hiring, except for “mission-critical” roles, and scale back other non-labor costs. At the same time, several executives announced their departure from the company. Like other tech companies, Twitter (TWTR) has been hit by a downturn in the stock market. Shares of the company are down about 4% as of Friday morning and are down more than 12% since the beginning of this year. Twitter’s shares are trading about 30% below Musk’s asking price, reflecting serious doubts about the deal, at least as it’s currently proposed. Despite signing a definitive agreement to buy the company in April, Musk has suggested he might try to go out of business over concerns about the number of bots on the platform — the rationale analysts have suggested could simply be an attempt , creating an excuse to exit a deal that appears overpriced given the market downturn. Shares of Tesla (TSLA), on which Musk partly relies to fund the deal, have also fallen sharply since the Twitter acquisition agreement. The latest twist in the saga came Thursday when the Washington Post reported that Musk’s deal to buy Twitter was “seriously in jeopardy” over alleged challenges in verifying Twitter’s spam account numbers, which are attributed to three people involved with are familiar with the mindset of Musk’s team. That’s despite Twitter handing Musk over his “firefighters” of data about tweets on the platform after he asked for more information.
Twitter held a background call with reporters earlier Thursday to explain its process for measuring spam and fake accounts — using both human and automated systems that examine public and private data like IP addresses and geolocation data — from which it consistently has reported that they are below 5% of its monetizable daily active users. Musk has placed them much higher, citing his own experiences on the platform but with no obvious evidence.
Should Musk attempt to pull out of the deal, it could result in a protracted legal battle with the company.