A federal jury in the United States has determined that Elon Musk was liable for allegations that he deceived Twitter shareholders by attempting to lower the social media company’s stock price, enabling him to renegotiate or withdraw from a $44 billion acquisition in 2022.
The ruling from a jury in the federal court of San Francisco emerged from a highly scrutinised civil trial in which Musk, recognised as the wealthiest individual globally, faced accusations of falsely asserting on social media that Twitter had understated the number of fake and spam accounts, referred to as bots, present on its platform.
While the damages have not yet been quantified, Francis Bottini, an attorney representing the shareholders, estimated that they could amount to approximately $2.5 billion.
“Musk’s position as the wealthiest man in the world does not exempt him from accountability,” Bottini said in a statement.
“If you have the ability to influence markets through your tweets, you are liable for the damage you inflict on investors.”
In a collective statement on the Twitter shareholders case, the legal representation of Elon Musk at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan described the verdict as “a minor setback. We expect vindication upon appeal.”
The civil trial commenced on March 2, with jurors beginning their deliberations on Tuesday.
Musk has frequently opted to confront shareholders in court rather than pursue a settlement.
Musk’s Grokipedia to compete against Wikipedia
Earlier, Elon Musk’s AI company xAI released Grokipedia, a new online encyclopedia that aimed to compete with Wikipedia and “seek the truth,” according to Musk.
The site went live as Grokipedia v0.1 with around 885,000 articles, far fewer than Wikipedia’s more than eight million English entries, but Musk has promised a v1.0 that will be “10X better.”
It is important to note that Grokipedia was written by generative AI, using xAI’s Grok assistant to draft and update entries.
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