The CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, valued his company at less than half of what it bought for when he sent out stock option offers to Twitter employees.
In an email sent earlier this month, the stock grants Musk offered to employees valued the company to be worth $20 billion. The tech entrepreneur and billionaire originally acquired the company for $44 billion last year.
Despite the company being valued at $20 billion, Musk also wrote in the email he sees “a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation.”
Traditionally, early tech startups offer stock options at a significant discount to encourage employees to work hard to increase the company’s value. “The move could be seen as an attempt to stem an exodus of talent,” Bloomberg reported.
“During his stewardship, Musk has laid off thousands of employees in a series of job cuts that then led to mass resignations, as workers fled growing uncertainty about the company’s direction.”
When Musk took over Twitter, he vowed to promote free speech on the platform. Under his leadership, independent journalists like Matt Taibbi have been able to report on internal documents and communications records about Twitter leadership pre-Musk.
The “Twitter Files” discuss censorship, Hunter Biden’s laptop, COVID-19, and Donald Trump.
