Investors accuse Tesla of ‘carnival barking, market manipulation, insider trading’
Investors accuse Musk of insider trading in a class action lawsuit against Tesla, saying the company’s manipulation of Dogecoin cost them billions of dollars. They argue in a Manhattan federal court that Musk used paid online influencers, deliberately undertook ‘publicity stunts’ like his 2021 appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and more, to trade profitably at their expense through several Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls. They say this included the time Musk sold about $124 million of Dogecoin after he replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog logo, leading to a 30% jump in Dogecoin’s price. The accusations are part of a proposed third amended complaint in the lawsuit which began in June 2022. (Tesla sought a dismissal of the second amended complaint, calling it a “fanciful work of fiction,” and said another amendment was unjustified, but US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said he would “likely” allow the third amended complaint, saying the defendants would not likely be prejudiced.) A “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud investors, promote himself and his companies, the filing said.
Musk apologizes to Magneto for Soros comparison
In an interview with The Babylon Bee, Musk is asked about his comments comparing Soros to the Marvel character, Magneto, while claiming Soros ‘hates humanity:
Sorry Magneto. Y’know, I shouldn’t have said that. It was unfair to Magneto.
@elonmusk apologizes to Magneto for comparing him to George Soros. pic.twitter.com/hfEzvwCJai
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 31, 2023
Musk criticises NPR: ‘You don’t generally bite the hand that feeds you’
In an interview with The Babylon Bee, Musk talks about NPR leaving Twitter, after the company labelled it as state0funded media:
We’re trying to apply the rules consistently at Twitter. If we’re going to call some media state-affiliated, then we should apply the label equally. They got pretty upset at that, and said that ‘state-affiliated’ implies that the state has editorial authority and influence over the content. So you’re saying you don’t have that? How self-aware are you? NPR literally, on their own website, said government funding was essential to their operation. We even changed [the label] from ‘state-affiliated’, to ‘state-funded’. That’s literally a statement of fact. But they’re unhappy with that. They have got to their punches in criticizing the government. It’s just a guess, based on their extreme dependence on government funding. I mean you don’t generally bite the hand that feeds you.
How will we ever stay informed on Twitter without NPR? pic.twitter.com/wWNN0fv8uq
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 31, 2023
Fidelity: Twitter worth 33% of Musk’s purchase price
According to Fidelity, which helped finance Musk’s purchase of Twitter, its valuation of its equity stake in the company puts the total value of Twitter at $15 billion, around 33% of what Musk originally paid for it. Fidelity downgraded its holdings in the company by 56% a month after the acquisition, by 63% in February 2023, and now by 66%. Musk’s investment in Twitter is now worth $8.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which uses Fidelity’s valuation to calculate the value of his holding. Musk spent more than $25 billion to acquire an estimated 79% stake in the company in 2022.
Musk: China and U.S. are like ‘conjoined twins’
In his first visit to China since January 2020, before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Musk meets with Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Musk compares US-China interests to conjoined twins and says Tesla opposes “decoupling” of the world’s two biggest economies. Gang told Musk that the two countries should “avoid dangerous driving” and:
keep the steering wheel in the right direction of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation…A healthy, stable and constructive China-US relationship is not only beneficial to both countries, but also to the world.
Gang also said that China’s development is an opportunity for the world.
EU: Twitter ‘can run’ from disinformation obligations, ‘but can’t hide’
Twitter withdraws from the European Union’s Code of Practice on online disinformation. But Twitter is considered a “very large online platform” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and is therefore obligated to assess and mitigate systemic risks to civic discourse and electoral processes, such as disinformation, under pan-EU law. Breaches of the DSA can attract penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover, but VLOPs are given a three month deadline to comply. Internal market commissioner Thierry Breton:
Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. But obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide. Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25. Our teams will be ready for enforcement.
Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation.
But obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide.
Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25.
Our teams will be ready for enforcement.
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) May 26, 2023
Israel: Musk promoting ‘fake news’ about COVID-19 data
Israel’s Ministry of Health says Musk was promoting “fake news” regarding COVID-19 data when he replied to a tweet from ZeroHedge, claiming Israeli data showed “zero young healthy individuals died of COVID-19.” Musk wrote “Zero …” (Twitter added a note to the Zero Hedge tweet, saying Israel’s health ministry “has called this article ‘misinformation.’”) The health ministry writes:
Elon, unfortunately this is not what the whole data shows. fake news is dangerous. Israel Ministry of Health was asked on chronic disease data and explained that we don’t have access to clinical records. We know from clinicians that young healthy people did die from COVID and hopefully data on that will be available on the near future from our HMOs.
Elon, unfortunately this is not what the whole data shows.
fake news is dangerous.
Israel Ministry of Health was asked on chronic disease data and explained that we don’t have access to clinical records >>>
— משרד הבריאות (@IsraelMOH) May 29, 2023
Cuban: Twitter algorithms designed to help Musk
Cuban accuses Musk of rigging Twitter algorithms to promote his own tweets. He says that because Twitter’s “For You” timeline, which is the first thing users see on the app, ranks tweets by the amount of interaction by a user’s followers, that it make’s Musk’s posts more influential, as he has the most followers, and the most interactions on the app. Cuban still has 8.8 million followers, but worries the algorithm change will affect how he promotes his online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs.
I figured I was/am on some Twitter s— list that doesn’t show me to new or existing users as a possible follow. I thought maybe, by paying the annual contract, that would change. It didn’t…It stands to reason that the person with the greatest number of followers will have the greatest influence on the most number of For You timelines. And For You candidates include, as stated above , tweets that people you follow engage with. So who @elonmusk engages with on Twitter has an ENORMOUS impact on what an indeterminable number of people see in their For You Timelines
Oops, I left out possibly the most obvious and important influence to For You timelines.
“What tweets did the people I follow recently engage with “
It stands to reason that the person with the greatest number of followers will have the greatest influence on the most number…
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 19, 2023
SpaceX releases Starship launch video
SpaceX releases a video of the first Starship launch, which flew for four minutes on April 20, 2023.
Another step closer to Mars — the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket
Musk: Next Starship launch in two months
Musk says the next Starship launch will take place in two months, after tested upgrades are made to the launchpad that was destroyed during the first launch.
Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship
Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2023
Neuralink human trials approved
Neuralink announces that it has received FDA approval for human trials. Musk congratulates the team in a tweet.
We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study! This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people. Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!
Congratulations Neuralink team! https://t.co/AWZGf33UDr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 26, 2023
Ford to use Tesla Superchargers
Ford strikes deal with Tesla to allow its electric vehicle owners to gain access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America in early 2024. This makes Ford the first major automaker to embrace Tesla’s proprietary charging standard and gives the company access to the biggest network of high-speed Superchargers in the United States. Tesla will provide an adapter to Ford EVs fitted with the Combined Charging System (CCS), giving them port access to Tesla’s V3 Superchargers. Ford will equip future EVs with Tesla’s own charging standard, removing the need for an adapter for direct access to Tesla Superchargers, starting in 2025. Pricing will be “competitive”. On Twitter Spaces, Musk tells Ford CEO Jim Farley:
The idea is that we don’t want the Tesla supercharger network to be like a walled garden. We want it to be something that is supportive of electrification and sustainable transport in general.
Farley:
We love the locations, we love the reliability, your routing software, the ease of use of the connector, the reliability of it. Tesla storms through the [Japanese bullet] train station like 300 kilometers per hour Shinkansen. We’re learning a lot.
Farley said earlier at a Morgan Stanley forum that:
[O]n the infrastructure side, I think it’s room for some collaboration between the auto companies, which is totally unnatural for us….the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional old companies…. It seems totally ridiculous that we have an infrastructure problem, and we can’t even agree on what plug to use. I think the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional auto companies. I think you’ll see Ford do that just because that’s what kind of company we are.
Coming soon: More locations to charge your Ford® electric vehicle. Thousands of them. @Tesla https://t.co/FayrARjD3s pic.twitter.com/CtDEcqvdwu
— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) May 25, 2023
Musk: Tesla might ‘open source more code’
Musk says Tesla might open up some of its operating system code to other automakers. Responding to Ford CEO Jim Farley, he says Tesla would:
…be helpful on the software front…In the same way that maybe Android is helpful to the phone industry as sort of a general standard, like we could potentially open source more code.
Musk and Farley also hinted at other potential partnerships in the future, including in the supply chain, and when Farley questioned him about Tesla’s Corpus Christi lithium refining plant, Musk said he does not believe there are enough entrepreneurs in the U.S. digging into raw materials mining and processing. He wishes Tesla didn’t have to pick up the slack. With its nickel-based cathode refinery in Austin, Tesla might also have to get involved in anode manufacturing, but “hopefully not,” Musk says. He also believes that there will be a huge market for synthetic graphite (graphite is the main material in most lithium-ion anodes).
Musk: Starship will lift 300 tons expendable, 180 tons reusable
Responding to a Twitter user, Musk says SpaceX Starship with improved Raptor 3 engines should lift 300 tons in expendable mode, or 180 tons in reusable mode. This compares with two years ago, when Two years ago Musk estimated a Starship would lift 250 tons to orbit in expandable mode and 150 tons in reusable mode. For comparison, the International Space Station weighs 450 tons and took around 50 Space Shuttle launches to complete. An earlier, SpaceX concept, called the Interplanetary Transport System, was planned to carry 550 tons expendable, 300 tons reusable.
Starship payload is 250 to 300 tons to orbit in expendable mode. Improved thrust & Isp from Raptor will enable ~6000 ton liftoff mass.
Starship payload is 250 to 300 tons to orbit in expendable mode.
Improved thrust & Isp from Raptor will enable ~6000 ton liftoff mass.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2023
DeSantis declares White House run on glitchy Twitter space
DeSantis officially launches his 2024 presidential campaign with an hour-long discussion, hosted by Musk and Sacks on a Twitter Space. Initially, the event was hit with technical glitches and audio-drops, which meant that many people could not listen. Sacks:
I think we’re breaking the internet here.
Around 700,000 people logged in to hear the conversation, including Donald Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, attorney Rudy Giuliani and legal adviser Jenna Ellis.
DeSantis says American democracy under attack by rising crime, out-of-touch liberal “woke” ideologies, out-of-control immigration at the southern border, and points to his track record as Florida governor as a blueprint for his plan in the White House. He says his achievements included the speed with which Florida opened up during the Covid pandemic, legislation restricting sex education in classrooms, and curbs on undocumented immigrants.
We know our country is going in the wrong direction. We see it with our eyes, and we feel it in our bones…Our president, well, he lacks vigour, flounders in the face of our nation’s challenges and he takes his cues from the woke mob. I don’t think it has to be this way. American decline isn’t inevitable. It is a choice.
We need the courage to lead and we must have the strength to win. If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 20th, 2025, at high noon because on the west side of the US Capitol, I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president.
Musk used the event to herald free speech and received praise from DeSantis and others for challenging mainstream platforms. Musk:
Twitter was expensive but free speech is priceless.
DeSantis’s team claims over $1m in campaign donations was raised in under an hour.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2023
Musk: Tesla will ‘strongly consider’ building Gigafactory in England
In an interview for The Wall Street Journal, Musk says Tesla is preparing to look for a location to build a new battery factory later this year and would assess England as an option.
I will strongly consider England for a future location of a gigafactory. We are not currently looking at new locations but we will probably towards the end of this year.
Tesla already operates several production facilities in Fremont, California, Austin, Texas, Berlin, Germany, and Shanghai, China. A factory in Mexico was announced in early 2023, but ground has not been broken yet.
Musk details succession plans
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Musk discusses his succession plans, including potential successors, how to handle ownership control of his companies, his plan for an educational institution to control his shares, and how he will not automatically give his children shares in his companies:
Succession is one of the toughest, age-old problems. It’s plagued countries, kings, prime ministers, presidents and CEOs, since the dawn of history. There is no obvious solution.
There are particular individuals that I’ve told the board, ‘Look, if something happens to me unexpectedly, this is my recommendation for who should take over.’ The board is aware who my recommendation is. It’s up to them of course.
I want to make sure the stewardship ultimately accrues the benefit of humanity. We’re not always successful in that, but that is aspirationally our goal. I have one idea that is partly in place, which is to create an education institution that would control most of my vote.
I am not of the school of automatically giving my kids some share of the companies, even if they have no interest, or inclination, or ability to manage the companies. I think that would be a mistake. It’s a very hard problem to solve.
Elon Musk on his succession plan: "There are particular individuals that I've told the board look If something happens to me unexpectedly, this is my recommendation for who should take over. The board is aware who my recommendation is. It's up to them of course." pic.twitter.com/uaDFXj5oQD
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) May 23, 2023
Starlink announces in-motion use
Starlink announces that its satellite broadband service can be used on vehicles and whilst in motion, with a tweet showing the antenna on an RV driving through the desert. The company is offering 220 Mbps download, starting at £247/month with a one-time hardware fee of £2,410. The company says School buses in Cocononino Country, Arizona are among the first to use the service, enabling students who ride the bus an hour to and from school each day to stay connected and complete their homework. Musk shares the announcement, adding:
And works almost everywhere on Earth with global roaming enabled!
And works almost everywhere on Earth with global roaming enabled! https://t.co/QmglKYRpDz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2023
Musk: AI could be ‘a danger’
Musk warns that AI could be a danger to humans, calling it “a double-edged sword” and saying it is not “necessary for anything we’re doing.”
If you have a genie that can grant you anything, that presents a danger…
He thinks AI advances the end of empires and expects governments to use it for weapons development before anything else.
There’s a little late-stage empire vibes right now…So just having more advanced weapons on the battlefield that can react faster than any human could is really what AI is capable of. Any future wars between advanced countries or at least countries with drone capability will be very much the drone wars.
On AI’s potential for peace, he says:
One way to achieve world peace is to take all the weapons away from the humans so they can no longer use them. I don’t think the AI is going to try to destroy all humanity but it might put us under strict controls
In terms of politics and the upcoming US presidential election, he says:
One of the first places you need to be careful of where AI is used is social media to manipulate public opinion. I think it’s something we need to be on the lookout for in the way of minimising the impact of AI manipulation. We’re certainly taking that seriously at Twitter and I think we’re putting in all the protections to detect large-scale manipulation of the system.
Musk Twitter buyout suit dismissed
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismisses a class-action lawsuit against Musk which accused him of cheating Twitter shareholders in the course of buying the company. (Heresniak v Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 22-03074)
According to the judge, the plaintiff lacked standing to sue because he challenged “wrongs associated with” Musk’s buyout, not the fairness of the buyout itself. Further, the judge says the plaintiff failed to show harm from Musk’s belated disclosure of a 9.2% Twitter stake (which the suit said let him buy more shares at lower prices before the buyout was announced) or from the late closing of the deal. The judge also finds no proof that Musk helped Dorsey and Silver Lake private equity firm managing partner Egon Durban breach their fiduciary duties by favoring their own and Musk’s interests – letting Dorsey roll his Twitter shares into an equity stake in the new company merely reduced the amount Musk paid at closing, it did not “improperly divert” money from other shareholders.