Elon Musk scrambling to find backers for Twitter takeover, sources say

I understood that PE firms raise debt to buy companies so they can basically use the company's cash to service the debt, ideally while "fixing up" the company so they can sell it later for a profit.

Twitter doesn't really generate much money, and Musk has said he wants to buy it out of altruism (or something like that). Which I can understand doing with his own money, but I can't understand doing with third party debt financing. Both because there is no money to service the debt, and because the requirements of streamlining the company to profitability could easily ruin any other motives he has in buying it.

I can picture something where a group agrees to loan him the money with his shares in tesla as collateral. But I don't get why normal PE folks would want to go in on this, nor why Musk would want them.