It’s been over two years since Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), and we’re just now seeing how hard its UK profits were hit.
According to The Guardian, X has now admitted that its UK revenues and profits nosedived in 2023, the year following Elon Musk’s takeover and the platform’s rebranding from Twitter.
According to documents filed to Companies House, revenue dropped a staggering 66% from £205.3 million in 2022 to just £69.1 million. The company’s profits didn’t fare much better, slipping from £5.6 million to £1.2 million, while pre-tax profit was down by nearly three-quarters.
X blamed the collapse on a familiar villain: advertisers walking out. The filings mention a decline in ad spending driven by worries about “brand safety and/or content moderation.”
This echoes the bigger picture we’ve seen globally. Ever since Musk took the reins, ad revenue has been shaky. At one point, he even threatened to name and shame fleeing advertisers.
In addition to that, X launched lawsuits against watchdog groups and critics who scrutinized content moderation on the platform.
It’s not just revenue and profit that tanked. Headcount did, too. The number of employees dropped to 114 from 399, and most of those who were let go were in research and development.
What’s strange is that even while X UK was in freefall, the larger company’s valuation was being propped up, thanks in no small part to Musk’s side hustle, xAI.
Recently, that lab bought X for $33 billion, and suddenly, the value looked like it had snapped back close to Musk’s original $44 billion purchase price. It’s also worth noting that Twitter UK Ltd was nearly struck off the register last month for not filing its accounts on time.
The company’s own filing tried to spin things forward-looking, saying it was “taking corrective measures” by rolling out brand safety tools, putting more into “platform safety and content moderation”, and aiming to “educate advertisers” on all of that.

Only for Swedish players are in men and women’s Top 500 tennis players. One of them is Björn Borg’s son Leo.
Legendary tennis player Björn Borg visited Barcelona this week to receive a tribute at the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell, a tournament he won 50 years ago -although he left before the tribute, scheduled before the match between Carlos Alcaraz and Ethan Quinn, due to personal reasons-.
Borg, winner of 11 Grand Slams, led a great generation of Swedish tennis players, specially on clay courts, like Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Joakim Nyström. However, the representation of Sweden in world tennis has dropped dramatically, and it makes Borg “disappointed”, as he told in an interview with RTVE.
“We had like five or six players at the top ten many years ago. Today we have problems. We slowly try to build, in the clubs in Sweden, what we think tennis should be. Federation is working really hard. I think we don’t have too much money involved in tennis. Other sports are coming along in the world, but we try really hard to bring back good players in tennis in the world.”
“I’m as disappointed as you with, if you say, Swedish tennis”, said to the Spanish reporter, adding that in Spain there are “more solutions to many things that we don’t have in Sweden”.
Today, there are only two men Swedish players in ATP Top 500 and two women in WTA Top 500, the best being placed 258 and 298 respectively. One of them, World No. 496, is Björn’s son Leo Borg, who played in Barcelona but lost 5-7, 6-7 to Jacob Fearnlay.
Naturally, Borg was also asked about Rafa Nadal, who described him as the best player mentally, and Carlos Alcaraz, whom he thinks “will achieve what Rafa did”: “He has the right mentality, he can play on any kind of surface. I hope he wins at least one Grand Slam, I’m going to watch him because I like the guy”, adding that he thinks he will become “the king of tennis”.

Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida is being immortalised in pixel form thanks to Bionic Bay.
Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida is being immortalised in pixel form thanks to Bionic Bay.
Bionic Bay is an upcoming “precision-puzzle platformer” that casts players as a scientist. It’s coming from developers Mureena Oy and Psychoflow Studio, and is all set in an “ancient bio-mechanical world” which has been “hand-crafted pixel by pixel to create a high-fidelity, atmospheric environment”. The game is set to release across both PC and PlayStation 5.
While Yoshida may have now left PlayStation, his legacy will certainly live on, and the former exec has now been announced as an unlockable character. Not only that, he even has his own “special” level.
Writing on the PlayStation blog, Bionic Bay creative director Juhana Myllys said the team was “ecstatic” to reveal its collaboration with Yoshida.
Yoshida’s level will be available via the upcoming game’s online challenge mode. “If you take part and beat Shu’s score, you can even unlock our Shu skin”, the developer wrote.
This skin, once unlocked, will allow players to customise the look of their scientist for Bionic Bay’s online leaderboards. You can see how it looks via the image below.
Following a slight delay, Bionic Bay will release tomorrow, 17th April.
Bionic Bay isn’t Yoshida’s only video game collaboration post-PlayStation. Back in January, Yoshida was announced to be part of the cast of Promise Mascot Agency. His role is a bright green, bird-like mascot called MonouGe who “just loves games”.
Away from starring roles in video games, earlier this week Yoshida made headlines for his thoughts on Nintendo’s next console, suggesting that the company positioning Switch 2 as simply a bigger and better follow-up to Switch 1 was damaging to the company’s brand identity.

After the hate her character got for her appearance in The Last Jedi, it might be surprising to some she’d want to return.
Star Wars Episode XIII: The Last Jedi is one of the most-controversial films in the entire franchise. Switching directors and visions for the sequel trilogy midway through was bound to be a bad idea, and this was proven by the immediate reaction from fans to Rian Johnson’s space opera. Some defend the film to the hilt to this day, while others believe it was the beginning of the end for the franchise.
Among all the things The Last Jedi got hate for, few sent fans into madness like the character Rose. Criticised for her sudden appearance and dragging Finn away from the main plot for the Canto Bight subplot, the character and actress behind her Kelly Marie Tran faced the type of hate that would put you off a franchise and perhaps even filmmaking for some time.
However, speaking to CBR, Kelly Marie Tran reveals she’s up for another go at a galaxy far, far away. “I have so much love and gratitude for that universe and that world”, she said. “I remain such [a Star Wars fan]. It has such a warm place in my heart, just that whole universe, and that entire experience. And I don’t know the context to which things would have to fall into place for Rose to return, but I will say that I just love that world.”
Considering Daisy Ridley’s Rey is going to return for a new lot of films soon, perhaps more sequel characters could have a comeback. But, with Rose’s role already being massively cut in The Rise of Skywalker, it seems as if the people behind the franchise might not want to risk the hate again.