Elon Musk concedes Twitter is now worth less than half what he paid in email about stock grants, report says

• Elon Musk offered stock grants to staff that value the company at $20 billion, Platformer reported.
• He paid $44 billion to take control of Twitter in late October.
• Musk told the employees left after the last round of layoffs that they were "highly regarded."

Elon Musk admitted that Twitter is now worth less than half what he paid in an email about stock grants to employees, reports say.

Zoë Schiffer, the managing editor of Platformer, tweeted Saturday that Musk told staff Twitter had been through a period of radical but necessary change because it'd been "about 4 months away from running out of money. Now, he says, the financial incentives of employees should align with the company."

She tweeted that the stock grants were based on a "$20b valuation." Musk paid $44 billion to take control of Twitter in late October.

Musk also told staff he saw a "clear but difficult path" to a $250 billion valuation, Schiffer tweeted.

The Information also reported on the email, in which Musk told employees they could sell their stock holdings for cash "every six months, based on a third party valuation" during "liquidity events."

That process would be similar to one used by SpaceX, which Musk said "achieves the public company advantage of having a liquid stock, but without the stock price chaos and lawsuit burdens of a public company," per the report.

He also wants employees to think of Twitter as an "inverse startup," per The Information, in a reference to the thousands of jobs that have been cut since he took over. Twitter now has few as 1,300 staff, per CNBC, down from about 7,500.

Following the last round of layoffs in February, Musk sent a memo with the subject line "Performance Awards" to remaining employees, saying those who are left would get "very significant" performance-based stock awards, according to The Verge.

"This past week, we completed a difficult organizational overhaul focused on improving future execution, using as much feedback as we could gather from the entire company," he added in the memo. "Those who remain are highly regarded by those around them."

Meanwhile, Musk reportedly emailed Twitter staff in the early hours of Wednesday to remind them about the company's remote working policy.

According to Schiffer, the Twitter CEO told staff that the "office is not optional."

Insider contacted Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message that didn't address the inquiry.