Since Elon owns like 172 million TSLA shares (Before stock split), he could have leveraged those shares in various ways this past year to get the money he needed.
I don’t know how much he could have raised, but assuming even with whatever he has in TSLA stock it would be possible to raise that money for himself.
Maybe he just decided to go after twitter after all.
Or maybe he saw the courts weren’t going to let him out of his deal.