- News sources claim that social media giant, Twitter is not paying AWS for the services it uses for months.
- After Twitter refused to pay for the AWS services, Amazon decided not to pay for the advertising that runs on Twitter.
- Twitter has signed a five-and-a-half-year contract with AWS in 2020 that requires Twitter to pay $510 million during that period.
Multiple news sources claim that after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the company stopped payments to third parties for the services it uses. According to the latest claims, Twitter is not paying its AWS bills either. Now, Twitter is $70 million behind on payments to AWS and the tech giant also has a plan.
$70 million behind
As we know, Twitter is working with both AWS and Google Cloud. In 2020, Twitter has signed a five-and-a-half-year contract with AWS, which costs the company $510 million over five-and-a-half-year. During that time, Twitter was planning to move its main timeline to AWS, but it didn’t happen. Twitter also has a five-year contract with Google Cloud worth $1 billion. It seems like the company is up to date on payments with Google Cloud for now.
New sources claim that in retaliation, Amazon also stated that the company will stop paying for the advertising that runs on Twitter, which is expected to be $1 million in the first quarter for retail. However, it can be more than that when Amazon Studios is taken into account. After Amazon’s move, Twitter decided to pay $10 million to AWS but it is still $70 million behind. Also, AWS is currently not interested in renegotiating the five-and-a-half-year contract.
Last 3 months were extremely tough, as had to save Twitter from bankruptcy, while fulfilling essential Tesla & SpaceX duties. Wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.
Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2023
After the acquisition, Elon Musk closed one of Twitter’s US data centers. Musk also reduced the IT and software workforce and cut back on server capacity. After these actions, Twitter has suffered multiple major outages.