Elon Musk might just be jonesing to kill 5,500 birds with one stone. According to a report published Thursday by The Washington Post, the Tesla mogul is floating the idea of laying off 75 percent of Twitter’s workforce, or roughly 5,500 of the total 7,500 employees, to potential investors. Despite a brief legal kerfuffle as Musk attempted to walk away from the $44 billion agreement he made to buy Twitter earlier this year, the deal is now moving ahead in good faith, sources told the Post. Musk is expected to close the deal by next Friday. According to documents obtained by the newspaper, which also interviewed a number of insiders close to the matter, Twitter’s current management had been planning to slash the company’s payroll down to around $800 million by the end of next year. That figure corresponds roughly to the departure of a quarter of staff headcount, according to the Post. In June—before he tried backing away from the deal—Musk said in a Q&A with Twitter employees that “anyone who is a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about.”
