Oh he's an idiot. But he can pay for people to plan things for him.

I don't doubt there was an original plan to gut the staff, sit back and profit from it while also having full control of the platform. So some of his investors, like the fucking Saudi crown, could benefit from that.

But when that failed they went this way. He didn't finance it himself, he certainly could have. Instead he got a group of wealthy investors involved, so maybe each is only on the hook for a billion or two; which to them is nothing. Hell, Musk himself grew his net worth from 150 to over 200 billion in that time.

Also there is precedent in what Trump(a bigger idiot for sure) did with the Atlantic city casino failure. Worked it so that he could use its losses as a tax write-off for years after.