Elon Musk says Twitter has a headcount of about 2,300

Twitter has about 2,300 active employees, Elon Musk said in a Tweet on Saturday.

CNBC on Friday reported that Twitter's full-time headcount has reduced to about 1,300 active, working employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title.

About 75 of the company's 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers, CNBC said, citing internal records.

"The note is incorrect. There are about 2300 active, working employees at Twitter," billionaire Musk tweeted in a response to a tweet quoting CNBC.

"There are still hundreds of employees working on trust & safety, along with several thousand contractors," Musk added.

Musk took over Twitter in October and swiftly moved through a number of product and organizational changes. The company rolled out Twitter-verified Blue check-mark as a paid service and also laid off about 50% staff.

Twitter in final months of 2022

Top advertisers on Twitter slashed their spending after Elon Musk's takeover, according to estimates compiled for Reuters by research firm Pathmatics, in the latest shock to the company's dominant revenue source.

Fourteen of the top 30 advertisers on Twitter stopped all advertising on the platform after Musk took charge on October 27, according to the Pathmatics estimates. Four advertisers reduced spending between 92% and 98.7% from the week before Musk's acquisition through the end of the year.

Overall, advertising spending by the top 30 companies fell by 42% to an estimated $53.8 million for November and December combined, according to Pathmatics, despite an increase in spending by six of them.

Pathmatics said the previously unreported figures on Twitter advertising are estimates. The firm bases its estimates on technologies that track ads on desktop browsers and the Twitter app as well as those that mimic user experience.

But the company said those estimates do not account for deals advertisers may receive from Twitter, or promoted trends and accounts. "It is possible the spending data could be higher for some brands" if Twitter is offering incentives, Pathmatics said in an email.

Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for comment.