Elon Musk says Twitter was heading towards bankruptcy had he not taken the decision to downsize its workforce drastically from about 8,000 employees to the estimated 1,500 workers the platform currently has.

Mr Musk made the statement in a BBC interview Tuesday night, defending the massive layoffs that left many workers jobless in an unprecedented turn of events shortly after he acquired the microblogging site for $44 billion last October.

Justifying the job cuts as a necessary precaution to save Twitter from sinking, the Twitter owner suggested any other measure would have had the platform struggling to sustain itself.

“The company’s going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut costs immediately,” Mr Musk said to the British media. “This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”

When asked if he regretted purchasing the platform, Mr Musk responded the acquisition “needed to be done.” He, however, admitted running the company has been extremely painful.

“The pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn’t been some sort of party,” Mr Musk said.

As part of sweeping changes on the platform, Mr Musk asked organisations to pay a mandatory $1,000 monthly subscription fee to get or retain their verification badges, an option The New York Times blatantly opposed.