SAN JOSE, Calif. — The future of one of the Bay Area’s most influential — and unprofitable — companies is in the hands of a man seen by some as a genius and by others as a madman. For now, chaos reigns at Twitter, with thousands of workers abruptly ousted Friday and advertisers wary of new owner Elon Musk’s plans for the social media giant.
“What’s he going to do? No one knows,” said Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley tech-industry guru and adjunct professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University.
Musk’s $44 billion leveraged buyout and privatization of Twitter last month saddled the company with $13 billion in debt. On Friday, Twitter, which has lost money for eight of the past 10 years, began a massive layoff that could amount to some 3,700 jobs, or half the San Francisco-based firm’s global workforce, according to many reports.
