Musk says Twitter now worth $20 billion, less than half what he paid for it

Twitter CEO Elon Musk reportedly told employees in an email on Friday that the company is now valued at $20 billion, less than half of the $44 billion he paid to purchase the company last year.

In the email, viewed by The New York Times, Musk also announced a new compensation program in which employees will be able to receive stock in his holding company, X Corp, that bought Twitter.

Musk updated workers on Twitter’s current financial position in the email, noting that the company, at one point, was running out of cash. “Twitter is being reshaped rapidly,” Musk wrote, adding that the company could be thought of as “an inverse start-up.” 

The company cut half of its workforce last year and Musk has stirred controversy with myriad changes to the platform. The billionaire has defended Twitter’s layoffs, saying it was losing more than $4 million a day. 

According to The New York Times, Musk also mentioned in the email that he believed Twitter could someday be worth $250 billion. 

Twitter plans to allow employees to sell their stock every six months, Musk added, akin to the practice at SpaceX, his privately held rocket manufacturer. The sales of private stock would allow employees to have “liquid stock, but without the stock price chaos and lawsuit burdens of a public company,” Musk wrote.