Twitter CEO Elon Musk appeared on the All-In podcast on Saturday and said the experience of leading Twitter has been a "rollercoaster" and that the company is not "in the fast lane for bankruptcy" any more.
The hosts asked Musk how things were going and he said, "Overall it seems to be going in a good direction and, you know, we've got the the expenses reasonably under control. So the company is not, like, in the fast lane of bankruptcy anymore."
"And we're releasing features faster than in Twitter's history at the same time as having contained the costs and reduced the cost structure by a factor of three, maybe maybe four," Musk added.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Space X and Tesla, said that the new Twitter verification system has been a new "revenue stream as well as a means of identifying, like, knowing that it's a real person and not a bot or a trial situation."
Before Musk's takeover of Twitter the company was "only occasionally profitable" according to NPR. The company has a $13 billion dollar debt, a figure that is seven times greater than its projected 2022 earnings.
In early April, reports emerged that Musk had become one of Twitter's largest shareholders with a 9.2 percent of a stake in the company. Twitter stock rose 23 percent in reaction and rumors circulated that Musk was positioning for a hostile takeover. On April 14, Musk made an offer to buy the platform and to take the company private.
Musk offered $54.20 per share, after weeks of negotiation, which amounted to a $44 billion bid. Musk did add a few caveats. The deal spent time in limbo in May around the exact numbers of spam and fake accounts on the site, but the Twitter board approved the sale in June.
After the approval, Musk sought to end the acquisition over concerns regarding the bots as the number seemed higher than initially reported. That move resulted in a legal battle between him and the company. A Delaware Court of Chancery gave Musk until Oct. 28 to close the deal, and Musk announced that he would go through with the offer.
After he took over, Musk said he planned to make Twitter profitable and began cutting staff and extraneous spending. The Washington Post reported he would lay off a full 75 percent of Twitter employees, a figure Musk said was grossly inflated. He did fire former Twitter lead counsel Vijaya Gadde and former CEO Parag Agrawal.
The All-In podcast is hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg.
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