Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City.
Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s Twitter was sued again in California this week for alleged failure to pay a vendor.
The latest complaint comes from a tech startup called Writer, Inc., and it’s at least the sixth company to sue Twitter in the United States over breach of contract and non-payment since Musk took over about 4 months ago.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO led a $44 billion buyout of Twitter, which closed around October 27, 2022. He sold billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares and took on some $13 billion in debt at Twitter as he became the sole director, new owner and CEO there.
Since then, Musk’s social media venture has been sued for non-payment by Writer and at least five others:
Its landlord in San Francisco, Columbia REIT
A private jet transportation service provider, Private Jet Services Group
An events-planning and production company, Blueprint Studios Trends
An M&A consulting firm, Innisfree M&A
And Analysis Group, a company that provided litigation related consulting services to Twitter and its counsel before Musk bought the company.
A legal and public records database, PlainSite, is tracking these lawsuits as they arise.
Twitter’s alleged non-payment of rent to Columbia REIT, has led to the real estate company defaulting on loans for buildings, including where Musk leases office space at 650 California Street in San Francisco, Fortune first reported.
Twitter has also allegedly fallen behind on payments to larger companies. According to a Platformer report on Thursday, Twitter suddenly cut off employees’ access to Slack this week after failing to pay a bill. Slack is the workplace chat and collaboration platform owned by Salesforce.
In the newest complaint, filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, Writer says that Twitter failed to pay a bill for the relatively humble amount of $113,856.
Previously known as Qordoba, Writer describes itself as an AI company that helps employees create content that meets their employer’s standards for brand, copy, and other style guidelines.
Writer did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the matter.
Twitter’s Vice President of Product, Trust & Safety, Ella Irwin, told CNBC via e-mail, “We do not comment on pending litigation or various speculation surrounding Twitter’s financial health.”
Musk has publicly groused about and made light of Twitter’s financial woes. This week, he wrote on Twitter, “Say what you want about me, but I acquired the world’s largest non-profit for $44B lol.”
Red flags
Nonpayment disputes like these are not common after a leveraged buyout, according to Boston College finance professor Edith Hotchkiss. She said in an email to CNBC that they are “more typical of companies that are within a very short window of filing for bankruptcy.”
Vanderbilt University finance professor Josh T. White, a former SEC economist, agreed the moves are unusual, and said litigation over nonpayment to vendors could result from “incorrect and aggressive capital structure.”
Musk’s Twitter deal was financed with around 30% debt and 70% equity at closing.
White explained that the high debt level is aggressive for a company with volatile and sometimes even negative free cash flow, such as Twitter had experienced in the past three years.
Leveraged buyouts more often target companies with stable cash flows that can be used to service debt and generate a tax shield by deducting interest expense, he wrote.
“Using more debt and less equity reduces the amount of liquid cash Musk and his equity co-investors had to contribute at closing, which can potentially generate a higher internal rate of return if the company turns out to be profitable,” White said.
Meanwhile, even after aggressive cost-cutting measures, including widespread layoffs and cutbacks on perks and infrastructure, Twitter is still probably struggling to generate positive free cash flow to pay its obligations, White suggested. “Nonpayment, and contract violations are certainly a red flag that the company is likely financially distressed.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.
Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”
The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.
From left, Parker Conrad, co-founder and CEO of Rippling, and Kleiner Perkins investor Ilya Fushman speak at the venture firm’s Fellows Founders Summit in San Francisco in September 2022.
Rippling
Human resources software startup Rippling said Friday that its valuation has swelled to $16.8 billion in its latest fundraising round.
The company raised $450 million in the round, and has committed to buying an additional $200 million worth of shares from current and previous employees. The company’s valuation is up from $13.5 billion in a round a year ago.
Rippling said there was no lead investor. Baillie Gifford, Elad Gil, Goldman Sachs Growth and others participated in the round, according to a statement from the San Francisco-based company.
With the tech IPO market mostly dormant over the past three-plus years, and President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on imports leading several companies to delay planned offerings, the most high-profile late-stage tech startups continue to tap private markets for growth capital. Rippling co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad told CNBC in an interview the the company isn’t planning for an IPO in the near future.
Conrad also highlighted a change that’s taken place in public markets in recent years, since inflation began soaring in late 2021, followed by higher interest rates. With concerns about the economy swirling, many tech companies downsized and took other steps toward generating and preserving cash.
“It does look a lot like, in order to be successful in the public markets, your growth rates have to come down so that you can be profitable,” said Conrad, who avoided enacting layoffs. “And so for us, that sort of pushes things out until the company looks profitable and probably slower growing, right?”
At Rippling, annual revenue growth is well over 30%, Conrad said, though he didn’t provide an updated sales figure. The information reported last year that Rippling doubled annual recurring revenue to over $350 million by the end of 2023 from a year prior.
Given the pace of expansion, Conrad said he isn’t fixated on profits at the moment at Rippling, which ranked 14th on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list.
Rippling offers payroll services, device management and corporate credit cards, among other products. Competitors include ADP, Paychex, Paycom Software and Paylocity.
There’s also privately held Deel, which Rippling sued in March for allegedly deploying a spy who collected confidential information. Conrad suggested that the publicity surrounding the case may be boosting business.
“I think it’s too early to say, looking at the data, how all of this is going to evolve from a market perspective, but certainly we see some companies that have said, ‘Hey, we’re talking to Rippling because of this,'” Conrad said.
Fortnite was booted from iPhones and Apple’s App Store in 2020, after Epic Games updated its software to link out to the company’s website and avoid Apple’s commissions. The move drew Apple’s anger, and kicked off a legal battle that has lasted for years.
Last month’s ruling, a victory for Epic Games, said that Apple was not allowed to charge a commission on link-outs or dictate if the links look like buttons, paving the way for Fortnite’s return.
Apple could still reject Fortnite’s submission. An Apple representative didn’t respond to a request for comment. Apple is appealing last month’s contempt ruling.
The announcement by Epic Games is the latest salvo in the battle between it and Apple, which has taken place in courts and with regulators around the world since 2020. Epic Games also sued Google, which operates the Play Store for Android phones.
Last month’s ruling has already shifted the economics of app development for iPhones.
Apple takes between 15% and 30% of purchases made using its in-app payment system. Linking to the web avoids those fees. Apple briefly allowed link-outs under its system but would charge a 27% commission, before last month’s ruling.
Developers including Amazon and Spotify have already updated their apps to avoid Apple’s commissions and direct customers to their own websites for payment.
Before last month, Amazon’s Kindle app told users they could not purchase a book in the iPhone app. After a recent update, the app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon’s website.
Fortnite has been available for iPhones in Europe since last year, through Epic Games’ store. Third-party app stores are allowed in Europe under the Digital Markets Act. Users have also been able to play Fortnite on iPhones and iPad through cloud gaming services.