As Elon Musk cuts costs at Twitter, some bills are going unpaid

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter last month, the company’s executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that the social media service planned to pay. But once Musk took over the company, he refused to reimburse travel vendors for those bills, current and former Twitter employees said. His staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors, the people said.

Musk has embarked on an enormous cost-cutting campaign since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.  But he has also conducted a sweeping examination of all types of other costs at the company, instructing staff to review, renegotiate and in some cases not pay Twitter’s outside vendors at all, eight people with knowledge of the matter said.

Musk’s actions reflect the financial pressure that Twitter is under.The interest payments for that debt totals more than $1 billion annually. Some advertisers have paused spending on Twitter as they evaluate Musk’s ownership. Musk, 51, has told Twitter employees that “the economic picture ahead is dire” and that bankruptcy might be in the cards for the company.

That helped lead to the mass layoffs at Twitter this month. And behind the scenes, no expenses are off the table .They have been asked to specifically make sure that employees and their expenses are for “real people and real expenses,” they said.

He is also looking at the company’s leases for office space, three people said, bucking on making payments and hoping to renegotiate or opt out of some commitments entirely. An NFL spokesperson did not immediately have a comment.

Davis, president of the Boring Co., has also directed Twitter employees to renegotiate the deals that the company has with firms such as Amazon and Oracle, which provide computing and tech services, the people said.