--- title: "Broke Boy Elon Musk Struggling to Pay Bills" description: "As the saying goes, the bill always comes due — and as it stands, it's unclear whether billionaire Elon Musk's Twitter can pay up." date: "2023-05-03" modified: "2023-05-03" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-struggling-pay-bills" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "billionaires" - "elon musk" - "the digest" - "twitter" --- # Broke Boy Elon Musk Struggling to Pay Bills ![As the saying goes, the bill always comes due — and as it stands, it's unclear whether billionaire Elon Musk's Twitter can pay up.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Time to Pay Up As the saying goes, the bill always comes — and as it stands, it's unclear whether Twitter CEO Elon Musk can afford to pay up. According [to *Bloomberg*](), Twitter is behind on paying over $10 million in various bills to a wide range of vendors, many of them small businesses that rely on the revenue. Four vendors filed a joint lawsuit in April over a breach of contract regarding unpaid bills, according to the report. Since December alone, at least ten other vendors have sued Twitter on similar grounds. And that kind of financial mismanagement has some very real consequences for some of the company's contractors, who are arguing that it's ridiculous the second richest man in the world is stiffing them. "It is nontrivial, $42,000 for a small company like mine," Norma Miller, CEO of a closed captioning services company, told *Bloomberg*. "This is about what he pays when he takes his jet from LA to San Francisco for a lunch meeting." ## Rough Few Months Miller, one of the four plaintiffs in the April case, claims that Twitter stopped paying up roughly two weeks before Musk officially took over the platform in October. Her firm was in the middle of a major project, but her point of contact disappeared as Musk [started laying off employees](), only to be replaced by an automated system. "Eventually, it was clearly just a bot answering us with the same answer over and over again," Miller told *Bloomberg.* Others echoed similar frustration with Twitter's post-layoff confusion. "We were then advised on several occasions that they were experiencing reorganization and delays," Naomi Newton, managing partner at Miami-based PR firm Cancomm, told *Bloomberg*. Cancomm is also suing Twitter, alleging that Musk owes it roughly $140,000. "We were also passed around to several different people within the organization," Newton continued, adding that Twitter's failure to pay up has created an "enormous cash-flow burden." Given that Musk [won't even pay to clean Twitter's bathrooms](), it's not terribly surprising behavior on his behalf. Meanwhile, Musk reportedly told employees in March that Twitter had lost [more than half]() of its valuation ever since he took over, but [promised]() that Twitter will "break even in Q2." But whether that means Musk will still have plenty of outstanding bills to pay at that point remains to be seen. Maybe instead of paying for [dead celebrities' blue checkmarks]() out-of-pocket, he should send some checks to Twitter's vendors he slighted first. **More on Musk's Twitter:** [*Twitter Landlord Unhappy with Elon's Naughty Change to Company Sign*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()