Elon Musk on Thursday addressed Twitter employees for the first time, expressing his view that Twitter would need to cut its headcount, but offering few other new details about his US$44 billion planned takeover of the social media company.
Musk appeared via video call 10 minutes late to what turned out to be a freewheeling question-and-answer session moderated by a Twitter executive, in which Musk mused about the existence of aliens and other space civilizations, and his view that Twitter should help “civilization and consciousness.”
The Tesla chief executive, who is also CEO of rocket company SpaceX, told Twitter staff he wants to raise the service’s user numbers from 229 million to at least 1 billion people, and said advertising would remain important for the company, despite previously saying he believes Twitter should not serve ads, according to audio of the meeting heard by Reuters.
“I think advertising is very important for Twitter,” Musk said. “I’m not against advertising. I would probably talk to the advertisers and say, like: ‘Hey, let’s just make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible.’”
Musk, who was expected to provide assurance to Twitter employees during his first meeting, did not offer an update on the deal closing.
He reiterated that he was still trying to learn more about bot and spam accounts on Twitter, which he called his biggest concern.
Asked whether he expected layoffs, Musk said there needed to be “some rationalization of headcount and expenses.”
“Right now, the costs exceed the revenue,” he said, adding: “Anyone who’s ... a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about.”
Twitter employees took to an internal Slack channel in droves during the session, posting memes and complaining that Musk was not providing useful answers on his vision for the business and employee compensation.
They also demanded on Slack that the moderator press Musk on his views about remote work, as Twitter currently allows employees relatively free rein to work remotely or in the office.
Musk said he believed Twitter staff should lean toward working in an office, but expressed willingness to make some exceptions.
The bias should be “strongly towards working in person, but if somebody is exceptional, then remote work can be okay,” he said.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS