Elon Musk’s Twitter failed to pay $136,000 in rent for one of its offices, landlord alleges in a lawsuit
Elon Musk is trying to cut costs at Twitter as close to zero as possible while his personal wealth decreases – and this seems to include a delay in paying the company’s office rent.
Twitter owes $136,260 in delinquent office rent on the 30th floor of a downtown San Francisco building, according to a lawsuit filed by the building’s owner last week.
Homeowner 650 california St., which is not Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, sent the social media company a notice on December 16 saying it would default if it didn’t pay within five days. Five days passed without payment, according to the lawsuit.
The landlord, Columbia REIT 650 California LLC, is seeking damages for the total amount of rent owed, as well as attorneys’ fees and other expenses. Twitter signed a seven-year office lease in 2017. The monthly rent was $107,526.50 for the first full year and gradually increased to $128,397 per month for the seventh year.
Twitter did not respond to a message for comment. The company no longer has a media relations department.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, and the company is paying about $1 billion a year in interest on the deal. Most of Musk’s fortune tied to Tesla stock ownership, has lost more than half of its value since he took ownership of Twitter. He’s sold nearly $23 billion of the electric-car company’s stock to fund the purchase since April, when he began building a spot in Twitter. He even lost his top spot as the richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
Musk defends his extreme cost-cutting measures last month in a late-night Twitter Spaces call.
“This company is basically like you’re in an airplane going straight down to the ground at high speed with the engine on fire and the controls not working,” Musk said on May 21. twelfth.
The company’s headquarters are located at another San Francisco address, 1355 Market St., where Twitter has also reported lagging in rent, according to the New York Times.
In addition to failing to pay rent and laying off workers, Musk’s Twitter also auctioned high-end office furniture, kitchen appliances and other relics of the past, when Twitter had more than 7,500 full-time employees. time around the world, and free lunch and other office activities. Privileges are common. About three-quarters of Twitter’s employee base is expected to leave the company, because they lay off, Fired or give up.
Among the items Twitter is auctioning off are pizza ovens, 40-quart commercial kitchen floor mixers (retail price around $18,000; auctions start at $25), designer furniture as high-end as the Eames chair from Herman Miller and Knoll Diamond chairs retail in the thousands.
Even a Twitter bird figurine (auctions start at $25) and a Twitter bird neon light display (auctions start at $50) are up for grabs in this explosive sale style auction. remember the dot-com bust of the early 2000s when failed tech startups sold off their decadent office supplies.
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