Twitter is being sued by landlords for evading rent for its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform is said to have undergone heavy cost-cutting under new CEO Elon Musk.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday by the Columbia Property Trust.
Twitter was reported early last month by the New York Times, which wrote that Musk and his advisers hope to renegotiate the terms of the lease after mass layoffs.
Downsizing has begun.
Twitter has closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported on Friday – cutting security and cleaning services. According to the report, employees must bring their own toilet paper to work.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and has cut costs since then, amid what Musk admits is a “dramatic drop” in revenue.
Sanitation and security staff were also fired from the company’s offices in New York and San Francisco, where workers went on strike demanding better pay. In San Francisco, Musk reduced the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four floors to two, the Times reported.
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered employees to go to a data center in Sacramento to shut down critical servers as a cost-cutting measure, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, layoffs continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy departments last week, the report said.
The Times reports that employees have been directed to delay payments to contractors or suppliers – including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects.
The company is also being sued for failing to pay nearly $200,000 for charter flights the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs to come, the report revealed.
Twitter did not return a request for comment on the new lawsuit.
Musk has pledged to step down as company leader after conducting a probe into whether he should step down. A successor has yet to be chosen.
A report shows that the billionaire’s acquisition of the social media company made him the first to lose $200 billion.
