[vonklaus]

Counterpoint: Maybe the agreement is breakable or they know they can resell the resources. This metric could be a good way to trick "tech savvy" analysts who don't care about total users.

I assume spending this much would give them a below market discount and they could recoup some of their losses if nec.

All this assumes it is a positioning tactic w/ a hedge. Maybe, they will just build a developer ecosystem a don't want to bifurcate their engineering output. If twitter fails, it would validate this choice as they can pay a slight premium and if their metrics increase build infrastructure in 2.5 years w/ more info to spec it