Twitter sued for not paying rent on its San Francisco headquarters since Elon Musk’s takeover

Twitter is being sued by its landlord for defaulting on rent for its downtown San Francisco headquarters, where the platform reportedly underwent major 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 that Musk and his advisers hoped to renegotiate the terms of leases after mass layoffs.

Downsizing has already begun.

Twitter closed its Seattle offices, The Times reported Friday — cutting janitorial and security services. Employees were left with their own toilet paper at work, according to the report.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and has been cutting costs ever since, amid what Musk admitted was a “massive drop”[ads1]; in revenue.

Cleaning and security staff were also laid off from the company’s New York and San Francisco offices, where workers demanded higher wages. In San Francisco, Musk condensed the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four stories to two, the Times reported.

On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered employees out to a data center in Sacramento to shut down key servers as a cost-cutting measure, the Times reported.

Meanwhile, layoffs have continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy departments last week, the report said.

Employees have been asked to delay payment of contractors or suppliers — including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, the Times reported.

The company is also being sued for failing to pay nearly $200,000 for private charter flights 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 promised to step down from leading the company after conducting a poll on whether he should step down. A successor has not yet been chosen.

The multibillionaire’s purchase of the social media company made him the first person ever to lose $200 billion, a report shows.