- Twitter is leaving at least a dozen international offices, two sources told Insider.
- Several hubs in Europe, Asia and Africa are closed.
- The closure comes amid cost-cutting, layoffs and layoffs under Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is closing many of Twitter’s international offices as he continues to cut costs and try to find ways for the company to make money.
At least a dozen international offices have closed or are closing, according to two people familiar with the company and the communications seen by Insider, along with several more in the U.S. expected to close in the coming weeks. The shutdown is also expected to put several hundred more Twitter employees out of a job, in addition to the thousands who have already been laid off or quit since Musk took over Twitter just over two months ago.
The offices being closed include some in Hong Kong and the Philippines, as well as Mexico and Africa, where all Twitter employees were laid off in November, according to people familiar with the matter. Offices in Australia, South Korea and most of those in Europe and India have also either closed or are expected to close in the coming weeks, the people familiar with the matter added, speaking on condition of anonymity while discussing company matters.
A large office in Singapore, Twitter’s Asian headquarters, was closed on Thursday local time due to non-payment of rent, the people said, as well as noted on Twitter Platformer reporter Casey Newton. One person in the know told Insider that later that day, Musk was late with his rent payment, and that employees — who were forced out of the office during the workday due to the initial non-payment — were told to return to work in the office.
Following this, a CapitaLand spokesperson responded to an earlier Insider query, saying only: “Twitter has been a tenant of CapitaGreen since 2015 and 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. It is now discussing internally limiting the offices to just 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 said.
A Twitter representative did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Twitter’s latest office opened in Ghana in 2021, marking the company’s first official presence in Africa.
“To truly serve the public conversation, we need to be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations that happen every day across the African continent,” Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s CEO who has since left the company. wrote in the corporate blog at the time.
The Singapore office, which opened in 2015, even expanded last year, with more office space and engineers brought in to grow the region.
“Expanding our engineering centers outside 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 presence in Singapore.
As for the other international offices, most were smaller outposts for business operations, including engineering and ad sales. Advertising accounts for nearly all of Twitter’s revenue, but the business has struggled under Musk.
With a deteriorating financial situation and ambitious plans for subscription revenue failing to materialize, Musk has been constantly cutting costs and making layoffs. Perks, perks, and even janitorial staff have been cut. Last week, Twitter had further layoffs in the trust and security and monetization departments, and individual employees continue to be fired frequently because they didn’t like Musk in one way or another.
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