2,300 active & working employees now at Twitter, clarifies Musk

SAN FRANCISCO: After a report claimed that Twitter is down to 1,300 full-time active employees from more than 7,500 last year, its CEO Elon Musk on Saturday refuted the report, saying the micro-blogging platform has nearly 2,300 active working employees.

A CNBC report, citing internal documents, claimed that Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers, and the company has fired about 80 per cent of its employees since Musk took over.

"Twitter's full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 active, working employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title," the report said.

It added that nearly 75 of the company's 1,300 employees are on leave, including about 40 engineers.

Musk said in a tweet that there are 2,300 active, working employees at Twitter.

"There are still hundreds of employees working on trust and safety, along with several thousand contractors," he posted.

Musk added that less than 10 people from "my other companies are working at Twitter".

Under Musk, the company brutally sacked thousands of employees, triggering the mass layoffs at other tech companies in the deepening funding winter amid recession fears.

Meanwhile, the Twitter CEO also announced that in the coming months, Twitter will translate and recommend "amazing tweets from people in other countries and cultures".

"There are epic tweets in other countries every day (Japan especially). Tweets will be translated before being recommended," he said.