Elon Musk Orders Twitter To Pare Infrastructure Costs By $1 Billion: Report

Twitter is aiming to find between $1.5 million and $3 million a day in savings from servers and Cloud services, according to a report

In a bid to pare excess expenditure, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has directed Twitter Inc's teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, citing two sources privy to the development news agency Reuters reported on Friday. According to the report, this move by Musk has raised concerns that Twitter could go down during high-traffic events like the US mid-term elections.

The micro-blogging company is aiming to find between $1.5 million and $3 million a day in savings from servers and Cloud services, said the Slack message, which referred to the project as "Deep Cuts Plan."

According to Reuters, Twitter is currently losing about $3 million a day "with all spending and revenue considered," according to an internal document reviewed by the news agency.

However, Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuter’s request for comment.

The steep infrastructure cuts could put the Twitter website and app at risk of going down during critical events when users are rushing to Twitter to consume and share information, such as during moments of crisis or major political events, the sources said.

The social media platform is exploring whether to cut extra server space that is kept to ensure Twitter can handle high traffic, one source said.

"(Musk) is willing to introduce that risk to meet these goals," the person said.

The second source described the proposed cuts as "delusional," adding that when user traffic kicks up, the service can fail "in spectacular ways."

Teams across Twitter are racing to present a plan to achieve the cost savings by a November 7 deadline, according to one of the sources and the Slack message. Some employees have been ordered to work in the office every day of the week to meet the deadline, the source said.

Cost cuts could also come from reduced spending on Google Cloud services, the source said.

Meanwhile, Musk is set to begin mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday that will cut down the company’s workforce. The staff was informed about the layoff through an official email, as reported by The Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post.