No, he didn't. He specifically said that his sale in the past week or so was to keep Twitter from going bankrupt as we move through a likely recession.
this is the transcript, reportedly. i think likely what you say but it isn't a 100% IMO
Musk: I think we need to spool up subscriptions. The reason I have extremely high urgency around subscriptions is that we are headed into, I think, quite a serious recession. And you can see that with basically every company doing layoffs. It’s not just Twitter. And in a recession, advertising is disproportionately affected. And then advertising where the advertiser cannot clearly trace how much they spent on an ad to what demand it generated, which is known as brand advertising, will be even more affected. This puts Twitter as we look ahead into a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint.
You may have read that I sold a bunch of Tesla stock. The reason I did that was to save Twitter. Not because I lack faith in Tesla. I think Tesla stock is going to be worth an immense amount in the future. I sold the stock for Twitter. To keep Twitter alive. And the reason that we are going hardcore with subscribers is to keep Twitter alive. There’s going to be probably a year or two of serious recession that, again, will disproportionately affect us. And we’re going to get through that and not be dead. That’s the reason for the priority there.
Related
I’ve been through the recession of 2000 and 2001 and 2008–9, and I’m somewhat paranoid about dying in recessions. I have recession PTSD from keeping X and PayPal alive through the 2000 recession, keeping Tesla alive in the 2009 recession. It’s worth remembering that, in 2009, General Motors and Chrysler both went bankrupt. Tesla did not, despite being a startup electric vehicle company. It was excruciatingly difficult to keep us alive in 2009. And the reason we were able to keep alive is partly by just being paranoid. It’s like Andy Gross’ famous statement: “Only the paranoid survive.” Well then, we are going to be paranoid, and we’re going to survive.
Moderator: I have another question from remote folks: What is our runway?
Musk: It’s difficult to say what our runway, our cash runway, is because I don’t know what the revenue shortfall will be next year. But I think it is possible that we could see a net negative cash flow of several billion dollars. It’s impossible to predict the actual severity of a recession or the length of it. But we do not want to have a situation where we’re betting on the recession being shallow and short if, in fact, it ends up being a deep recession that is long. We need to make sure we can survive a deep recession that is long.
