Add Elon’s Buddy Larry Ellison To The Creditors List Of Those That Twitter Is Refusing To Pay
from the get-in-line dept
We already knew that Twitter had stopped paying its cloud computing bills from Google and Amazon as Elon continues his “pursuit of profitability” that he himself destroyed in Twitter (remember, Twitter was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over at a much higher run rate, before Elon drove away somewhere around half of the advertising revenue of the company while simultaneously saddling it with massive debt). I may not be a massively successful business man, but I’m having trouble with the business logic of driving away half of revenue for no clear reason, while increasing the company’s expenses through unnecessary debt financing, combined with trying to make up the difference by breaching contracts left and right.
Apparently one of new CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first orders of business was to call up Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, and promise to start paying the bills again (and hopefully get Google to spend more on Twitter ads and maybe a licensing deal on the newly expensive API).
Either way, apparently Google and Amazon aren’t the only cloud providers Elon stiffed: the latest news is that they’re not paying their Oracle cloud bill.
Representatives for Oracle have started directly calling current and former Twitter employees in an attempt to collect on past-due invoices well into the six-figure range, the people said. Oracle has for several years provided Twitter with data-storage services, one of the people added.
Now, this one is particularly funny, given that Oracle founder (and chairman and CTO) Larry Ellison is a close friend of Musk’s and, somewhat famously, invested in Elon’s Twitter buyout. As you may recall, Ellison and Elon texted each other, with Larry basically promising to dump however much money into the Twitter buyout as Elon wanted, casually tossing off the idea of putting in $1 or $2 billion.
From the mockup we created after these actual texts were revealed in the Twitter purchase lawsuit:
In the end, it turned out that Ellison put in $1 billion (which is now valued at significantly less than that by basically everyone). I remember at the time, there was some talk of how this would be a business win for Oracle, who has desperately been trying to build up its cloud computing business which has definitely lagged the bigger name cloud computing companies (and even when it wins deals, like TikTok, those come from political connections rather than through standard business practices).
But instead of being a boon to Ellison’s Oracle, Musk has now set much of his billion dollars on fire, and is refusing to pay Oracle’s bills. It really raises serious questions about who would ever trust this guy in any future business deal ever. And will Yaccarino now have to have a call with Larry to “smooth things over” like she did with Kurian (notably: a former top Oracle exec) at Google?
Filed Under: creditors, debt, elon musk, larry ellison, linda yaccarino
Companies: oracle, twitter
Comments on “Add Elon’s Buddy Larry Ellison To The Creditors List Of Those That Twitter Is Refusing To Pay”
turn it off
Why don’t the service providers just pause their access completely until the bills are paid? It’s very simple.
Re:
It would be terrible PR for Oracle if they were very publicly the reason Twitter went down, even if shutting off Twitter’s service was completely justified.
Musk would say Twitter was obviously going to pay the bill; and most customers don’t want their service shut off completely just because they’re late with one payment.
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Providing random payments to their debtors is a tactic to keep them from shutting off service – hoping that THEY are the one that gets paid this month.
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Months. Multiple. Its behind a paywall, but the source article’s headline indicates Twitter hasn’t been paying for “months”. The 6 months of non-payment for other services and rents is likely mirrored here.
Re: Re: Schadenfreude is grossly underappreciated
Terrible PR? The libertarian Musk fanboys believe people should accept responsibility for their actions*
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So… two points.
1) Oracle hasn’t got the best PR to start with, what with the attempt to fuck Google over for Android and trying to plead the victim for $2 billion.
2) Given the current state of Twitter, if Oracle was the reason Twitter went down, most people would celebrate Oracle…
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umm…did you forget that Larry Ellison has $1bn invested in Twitter? His right had is stabbing his left hand, but he can’t just cut off the right hand.
If Elon was not a moron, I would suggest that this was a strategic move that he made right at the beginning. However, based on his other decisions of late, I would assume he simply stumbled into this while trying to look cool.
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Because that would mean that they never get paid, whereas keeping the service going means there is a slim chance they might get paid.
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That line of thinking only really holds if it costs nothing to keep providing service, however as it stands Oracle is just bleeding money(to the tune of six figures and rising) by continuing to work without pay, which makes it pretty clear ‘hey could you pay your bill?’ isn’t cutting it and more extreme steps can and should be taken.
What’s with the “Elon” business, anyway?
You’re like the only guy I know of who routinely refers to him by his first name and isn’t a comments-section sycophant.
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It’s a mark of respect, like with “The Donald”. Also it makes if possible to refer to Twitter users as an “Elon-gated community”, given his permanent meddling with moderation rules.
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What is there to respect about any of the morons spouting about how great they are?
Actual great people do not go around patting themselves on the back do they?
I think the word to use in this case would be Regard rather than Respect.
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Nowadays? I just call him “Trumpy” because he can do stupid things and we tend to step in some Trumpy-dumpy every now and then.
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I’m fairly confident it’s not.
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All other things aside… it is the guys first name. I don’t see a reason to read much into it.
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That, and the name is unusual enough that people can probably guess who it refers to. Were the name something like “Bob”, we’d probably need the surname.
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With the exception of John Oliver telling Bob to eat shit.
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i thought “Bob” was the surname of the guy named “Eat Shit”.
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I recognize that meme, but have no clue which “Bob” it refers to.
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The coal asshole who tried to sue John Oliver for criticizing him.
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Ah, right. But the coal industry’s gotta be as full of assholes as Spaceball One, with many named Bob. I doubt even an average Techdirt reader or Oliver viewer could pick this Bob out of a lineup, give their surname or company name, or say what led to Oliver’s dietary suggestion.
Re: Re: Re:5 reasonable doubt
The doubt may be reasonable, but in fact Oliver was making fun of the appearance of ``Eat Shit” Bob. It got to the point of hurting his feelings by saying that he looked like a geriatric Dr. Evil. Bob even complained of the insult in his unsuccessful suit.
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… it’s his name and given the context is immediately recognizable as such?
From 'pretty please pay' to 'since you won't pay GET OUT'
At this point with all the services and people Elon refuses to pay it seems the only reason Twitter hasn’t completely collapsed is because no-one wants to be the first to pull the trigger and go from asking/threatening/demanding to get paid to full blown cutting Twitter off from the properties and/or services they’re not paying for.
Once the first company does that though I suspect it’ll cause an avalanche of others following suit and the crash will happen shockingly fast.
Re: surprised it has not happened already
Some landlords would get impatient after several months of non-payment and would bring eviction.
“Add Elon’s Buddy Larry Ellison To The Creditors List Of Those That Twitter Is Refusing To Pay”
I think Elon and Donald should get together and come up with a book on how to screw your contractors and suppliers.
Between them I think they probably have all of the different mechanisms covered, and it would be a valuable reference for future CEOs….
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No, Twitter wasn't profitable.
It in fact lost something like a billion dollars over the last 10 years.
This is an actually meaningless statement. It’s classic cherry picking to make a stat look good that is not. It’s dumb that you ever used it, it’ extra dumb that you KEEP on using it despite it’s inanity being pointed out, and it’s an indictment on your readership that basically no one else calls you out on it.
Are you dumb, or do you just think the rest of us are that you keep on citing this? Twitter has been losing money for a long time. It in fact lost money in the last 20 quaters, pre-musk. Citing that the loses were clustered doesn’t change any of that.
Except no, again, Twitter was losing money. Which you don’t even contest, you just try to disguise. This is pathetic.
You may now continue to post petty gossip about Musk as if it matters.
I understand, he took away your favorite “Trust and Safety”: (meaning censorship) regime.
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If what Mike say doesn’t matter, why are you here playing the village idiot?
Oh.. You are the village idiot..
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Say goodbye to your penis privileges, you straight white terrorist. Your offspring are going to have to get used to having Madam and Eve for parents.