> He is jeopardizing the continued viability of a $44b investment to save maybe a few hundred million max.

Both he and the market know that he paid too much for Twitter. It isn't worth $44B, but he needs to make it lean enough to start throwing off enough cash to pay back the loans he took to buy it at that price.

Since it is very hard to increase revenue (especially when he is allowing more advertiser-repellent content), he is trying to dramatically cut costs while trying to increase non advertising revenue.

He can't go back to the banks and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and explain to them that he needs a deferment so he can invest in more efficient SRE and content moderation. He has to sleep in the bed he made, which means show his creditors the money.