--- title: "In Leaked Email, Elon Musk Admits Defeat on Twitter" description: "Twitter's financials are still looking pretty dire — as owner Elon Musk himself admitted in a January email to staff reviewed by the WSJ." date: "2025-01-24" modified: "2025-01-24" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/leaked-email-elon-musk-defeat-twitter" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "donald trump" - "elon musk" - "the digest" - "twitter" --- # In Leaked Email, Elon Musk Admits Defeat on Twitter ![Twitter's financials are still looking pretty dire — as owner Elon Musk himself admitted in a January email to staff reviewed by the WSJ.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Cutting Losses Banks that loaned multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk an appreciable $13 billion for his ill-advised $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in late 2022 are getting ready to offload billions of debt they accrued as a result, the [*Wall Street Journal* reports](). The hope is to minimize the hurt as they sell off the debt, a massive scar haunting the mercurial CEO's disastrous social media platform shopping spree. After a chaotic couple of years, and Musk seemingly doing his best to wipe out what was left of the platform's largely ad-dependant revenue with increasingly erratic behavior, X-formerly-Twitter's finances have yet to recover. The company is still drowning in accumulated debt while loaners are struggling with massive payments. In short, the financials are still looking pretty dire — as Musk himself admitted in a January email to staff reviewed by the *WSJ*. "Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even," he admitted. ## Scraping By Musk's own actions, including [racist tirades](), tantrums, and [personal insults](), sent advertisers — the platform's top source of revenue — [running for the hills](). X has maintained that its [financials are improving](), the *WSJ* reports, with brands coming back to advertise on the platform. But as the increasingly hate-filled microblogging site continues to embrace what it claims to be "free speech," several key competitors, including Meta's Threads and Twitter alternative Bluesky, have emerged as serious contenders. Both platforms have seen a [dramatic influx of new users fleeing Twitter](), indicating widespread disillusionment with Musk's disdain for content moderation and embrace of the extreme far right. Now that Musk has catapulted himself onto the political world stage by throwing himself at Trump's feet, banks are seemingly seeing the moment as an opportunity to sell their debt without incurring huge losses. In short, Musk's acquisition of Twitter remains a major blemish on his resume. At the same time, the platform has turned out to be a powerful tool for pumping out a firehose of [hate speech](), [state propaganda](), and [disinformation](). And who knows how much *that's* worth to Musk or Trump? "Over the last few months, we’ve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes," Musk wrote in the email. **More on Twitter:** *[Elon Musk Once Said He Mainly Tweets While Pooping, So We Now Have Grave Concerns About the Condition of His Gastrointestinal System]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()