Less than a month after acquiring the social media platform, Elon Musk has told staff at Twitter that the company could go bankrupt.

The comments were made on Musk’s first mass call with employees following his $44 billion purchase. According to multiple sources, the billionaire said that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question”.

He subsequently sent a follow up email to staff where he reinforced the situation: “Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

One of Musk’s first major changes as chief executive was the introduction of Twitter Blue, a subscription platform that allows users to pay to have a blue checkmark against their name – something previously reserved for public figures or official accounts of governments and brands. This has already resulted in various public figures being impersonated by ‘pay verified’ Twitter Blue users.

Elsewhere, Musk’s brutal approach to staff layoffs has sent shockwaves through the industry, while many senior figures at the company have resigned as a result of Musk’s vision for the platform.

The latest on an expanding list of senior figures who have handed in their notice is Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity who had been tasked with convincing advertisers that Musk’s more lax approach to content moderation would not see the platform descend into a free-for-all.

Earlier on Thursday, chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty all announced they are departing, triggering warnings from the US’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Following that, Roth and Twitter’s head of client solutions, Robin Wheeler also left the company.

Multiple reports have also suggested that a number of staff who found out they had been made redundant when they were locked out of their work email accounts have been asked to return to their roles.

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