Twitter is being sued by its landlord for ducking out on rent for its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform reportedly went through heavy cost-cutting under new CEO Elon Musk.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday by Columbia Property Trust.
Twitter’s freeloading was reported early last month by the New York Times, which wrote Musk and his advisors hoped to renegotiate terms of lease agreements after mass layoffs.
The downsizing has already begun.
Twitter closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported Friday — cutting janitorial and security services. Employees were left bringing their own toilet paper to work, according to the report.
Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October and has been cutting costs ever since, amid what Musk admitted was a “massive drop” in revenue.
Cleaning and security staff were also laid off from the company’s New York and San Francisco offices, where workers struck for higher pay. In San Francisco, Musk condensed the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four floors to two, the Times reported.
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered staff out to a data center in Sacramento to shutdown key servers as a cost-cutting measuring, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, layoffs have continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy divisions last week, the report said.
Employees have been directed to delay paying contractors or vendors — including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, the Times reported.
The company is also being sued for failing to pay almost $200,000 for private charter flights made the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs to come, the report revealed.
Twitter did not return a request for comment regarding the new lawsuit.
Musk has pledged to step down from leading 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 ever to lose $200 billion, a report found.
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