Report: Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Valued At Less Than Half of What He Paid For It Just Days After Sending Frantic Email to Employees at 2:30 A.M.
The billionaire purchased the social media platform for an estimated $44 billion.
By Emily Rella •
Things over at Twitter HQ seem to be in disarray, according to multiple internal documents viewed by Platformer over the past few days.
A leaked memo from last Wednesday, viewed by Platformer's managing editor Zoë Schiffer, revealed that Musk sent an email to employees around 2:30 a.m. telling them that the office was "not optional" while noting that Twitter's HQ in San Francisco was half empty the day prior.
NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don't come in 3x per week.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 22, 2023
ALSO: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2:30am saying the "office is not optional" and noting SF was half empty yesterday.
The message was not unexpected, as Musk made it clear almost immediately upon his takeover of the social media platform that he expects employees to work "in office a minimum of 40 hours per week" and that "remote work is no longer allowed unless you have a specific exception."
Just days after last week's reminder, another internal memo leaked that shows how ominous things are at Musk's "Twitter 2.0."
According to the internal document, Musk said that employee stock grants are to be based on what he estimated to be a $20 billion valuation for the company — less than half of what he paid for it (an estimated $44 billion) last fall.
Schiffer explained that Musk's ultimate goal is to get Twitter to a $250 billion valuation (tenfold from where it is now) and told employees that there's a "clear but difficult path" to get there, simultaneously nodding to the changes the company has implemented over the past five months.
Comp increases will be based on X Corp stock. Current grants are based on a $20b valuation. Musk says he sees a "clear but difficult path" to $250 billion valuation which would mean current grants could 10x. 3/
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 25, 2023
He also said that Twitter was on the path of an "inverse startup," which would align with the mass layoffs and the arduous hours employees have been working, with some even sleeping inside the office to maximize productivity.
On top of all the internal drama, a lawsuit filed by Twitter at the beginning of the weekend confirmed that part of Twitter's source code (the backend code that runs the platform for use) had been leaked online by a rogue user on internet hosting platform Github.
The filing asked for Github to remove the posting, which it did. It also asked the court to provide personal information (names, IP addresses, phone numbers) associated with the user profile that posted the source code, ironically named "FreeSpeechEnthuisast."
Musk did not publicly comment on either of the leaks.
