Elon Musk is closing many international Twitter offices as he continues to cut costs and try to find ways the company can make money.
At least a dozen international offices are closed or are closing, according to two people familiar with the company and messages seen by Insider, along with several more in the US that are expected to close in the coming weeks. The closings are also expected to result in another few hundred Twitter employees losing their jobs, in addition to the thousands who have already been laid off or fired or who have resigned since Musk took over Twitter just over two months ago.
Offices being closed include some in Hong Kong and the Philippines as well as in Mexico and Africa, where all Twitter employees were laid off in November, according to the people familiar. Offices in Australia, South Korea, and most of the offices in Europe and India are also either closed or expected to close in the coming weeks, the people familiar added, asking not to be identified discussing company matters.
A major office in Singapore, Twitter's headquarters in Asia, was shuttered Thursday local time because of nonpayment of rent, the people familiar said, as also noted on Twitter by the Platformer reporter Casey Newton. One of the people familiar told Insider that Musk ultimately made a late rent payment later that day and that employees — who had been forced to leave the office during the workday over the initial nonpayment — were told to return to work at the office.
After this, a spokesperson for CapitaLand responded to an earlier inquiry from Insider, saying only: "Twitter has been a tenant of CapitaGreen since 2015, and it remains a tenant of CapitaGreen."
Twitter previously had more than two dozen international offices in major cities around the world, including Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Manila, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Jakarta, along with about 20 offices in the US. Now, it's internally discussing limiting offices to only a handful, such as San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles in the US as well as globally in London, Tokyo, and Dublin, one of the people familiar said.
A Twitter representative didn't respond to an email seeking comment.
Twitter's most recent office opening was in 2021 in Ghana, the company's first official presence in Africa.
"To truly serve the public conversation, we must be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations taking place every day across the African continent," Kayvon Beykpour, a Twitter executive who's since left the company, wrote in a corporate blog post at the time.
The Singapore office, which opened in 2015, even expanded last year, with more office space and engineers brought on to grow in the region.
"The expansion of our engineering hubs outside of the US accelerates our commitment to building a truly global, inclusive, and accessible product by creating a more distributed workforce," Twitter wrote in a statement about expanding its Singapore presence.
As for other international offices, most were smaller outposts for business operations, including engineering and ad sales. Advertising makes up nearly all of Twitter's revenue, but the business has struggled under Musk.
With deteriorating financial footing and ambitious plans for subscription revenue that have not panned out, Musk has continually cut costs and conducting layoffs. Benefits, perks, and even janitorial staff members have been cut. Last week, Twitter had further layoffs in the Trust and Safety and Monetization departments, and individual employees are still frequently fired for displeasing Musk in one way or another.
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