A civil jury in California on Friday ruled Elon Musk intentionally misled Twitter investors tried to retreat In 2022, it acquired the platform for $44 billion.
At the time, Musk tweeted that there were too many bots on Twitter, so he later tried to deny the acquisition. (Twitter is over He is suing Musk to force him to enter into a contract.)
“Twitter is temporarily suspending pending details that support estimates that spam/fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users,” Musk wrote on the platform, which has since changed its name to X.
Musk shared this on Twitter a few days after posting it decreased by 8%. Investor Giuseppe Pampena filed the lawsuit against Musk on behalf of other former Twitter investors who sold Twitter stock between May 13 (the day of the tweet) and October 4, the day the deal closed.
of Pampena claim Musk has argued that he deliberately publicized his concerns with Twitter to create uncertainty about the platform’s stability in order to artificially lower the stock price and cause stock sellers to suffer losses during that window. Musk’s lawyers argued that he had legitimate concerns about the number of bots on the app. But the jury believed the plaintiff’s argument more.
It’s not yet known how much Musk will have to pay former Twitter shareholders, but Pampena’s lawyer said the damages could reach $2.6 billion. CNBC. This is not a huge blow to Musk Bloomberg estimates his wealth at more than 660 billion dollars.
This isn’t the first time Musk has gone to court over tweets. In 2018, he tweeted secured finance Taking Tesla private for $420 a share, meaning he planned to buy out public shareholders and delist the company. The The SEC claimed He said the posts were misleading and accused Musk of securities fraud. Musk later had to testify in court that he was not joking about marijuana (420 is a widely recognized reference to cannabis) and claimed that he seriously believed he could buy Tesla for $420 per share, a significant premium on Tesla’s stock price at the time.
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Musk has won a similar lawsuit filed by shareholders over his “funding” tweets, but this time he will have to pay.
After acquiring Twitter, Musk rebranded the company as X, then merged it with a new AI company. xAI. The combined company was valued 113 billion dollarsAccording to the mask. Then, last month SpaceX teamed up with xAI. Musk said the merger is related to his desire to build data centers in space.
