Twitter monetizes via 1. advertising, 2. subscriptions, 3. API sales, admittedly I have no idea of the actual numbers.
The first claim (that Twitter needs revenue urgently) seems false since the owner has deep pockets.
Currently Twitter is in the red, and he needs it to not be that and to generate a multi-billion surplus to pay back the investors he took up to finance this.
Can you explain how Twitter manages to spend $20B per year?
Say they have 1000 employees @ $200k/year, that's $200m/year (1/5th of 1B). Where are the remaining $19.8B being spent? That figure doesn't pass the sniff test.
What I’m saying is for Elon to even break even on the deal, using the information we have access to, he needs its evaluations to reach at least $40B. Once it reaches that, it actually proves itself as having been at minimum a neutral purchase. Albeit the real numbers it has to reach and how much profit it needs are both currently unknown.
They became that rich by not losing money. It’s a sinking ship and he is trying to plug the hole.