Sources: The Boring Company CEO Steve Davis has been overseeing Twitter's recent cost-cutting, including laying off 200+, amid talk he may be Twitter's next CEO
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Context & Ripple Effects
Steve Davis, who runs The Boring Company, has been quietly doing double duty inside Twitter, driving the latest round of cost cuts — including 200+ layoffs — while sources float him as a possible successor to Elon Musk at the helm. It extends a pattern: after Musk publicly argued that without deep cuts Twitter faced what he called a $3B-a-year negative cash flow situation and would "be okay" once spending came down, execution of those cuts has been delegated to his longest-serving deputies.
Davis is not a one-off hire but part of a small circle Musk redeploys across his companies — coverage two years later shows him interviewing candidates for Musk's DOGE effort, which makes today's report read as an early data point in how Musk staffs ventures with trusted lieutenants rather than outside executives.
First-order effects
- 200+ more Twitter employees lose their jobs, with a leader from outside Twitter — The Boring Company's own CEO — holding operational authority over headcount decisions rather than any Twitter-native executive.
Second-order effects
- If Davis takes the CEO title, it formalizes a structure where Twitter is run by a Musk-company deputy on loan, signaling to remaining staff and advertisers that strategy stays anchored to Musk's cost targets rather than a product-led rebuild.
Third-order effects
- Musk's operating model consolidates around a portable cadre of cost-focused lieutenants who move between Tesla-adjacent ventures, Twitter/X, and government-efficiency work — a staffing pattern that substitutes personal loyalty for conventional executive succession at every company he controls.
The trend: Elon Musk's companies are converging on a single playbook: rotating a small bench of trusted cost-cutting deputies across ventures instead of appointing independent CEOs.