Twitter is being sued by its landlord for cutting the rent at its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform has reportedly undergone significant cost-cutting under new CEO Elon Musk.
According to the lawsuit filed Thursday by Columbia Property Trust, the company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent.
Twitter’s free-riding was flagged up earlier last month by the New York Times, which wrote that Musk and his advisors hoped to renegotiate the terms of leases following mass layoffs.
The dismantling has already started.
Twitter closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported Friday — and reduced janitorial and security services. According to the report, employees had to bring their own toilet paper to work.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and has since cut costs, though Musk admitted there was a “massive drop” in revenue.
Cleaners and security guards were also laid off at the company’s offices in New York and San Francisco, where workers were on strike for higher wages. In San Francisco, Musk reduced the company’s footprint from four floors to two at 650 California Street, the Times reported.
Twitter’s San Francisco staff is located in the Hartford Building at 650 California Street. Getty Images
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered workers at a Sacramento data center to shut down key servers to save costs, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, layoffs continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public order areas last week, the report said.
Staff have been ordered to delay paying contractors or suppliers – including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, the Times reported.
The company is also being sued for not paying nearly $200,000 for private charter flights operated during the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs, the report said.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to landlord Columbia Property Trust’s lawsuit filed Thursday. Getty Images for The Met Museum/
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on the new lawsuit.
Musk has pledged to step down from running the company after conducting a poll on whether he should step down. A successor has yet to be chosen.
The multi-billionaire’s purchase of the social media company made him the first person to lose $200 billion, a report revealed.