Elon Musk says his SpaceX shares would’ve funded his plan to take Tesla private

Elon Musk said he could’ve sold his SpaceX shares to take Tesla private when he took the witness stand again to defend his 2018 “funding secured” tweets in a lawsuit filed by the automaker’s shareholders. According to CNBC, Musk proclaimed: “SpaceX stock alone meant ‘funding secured’ by itself. It’s not that I want to sell SpaceX stock but I could have, and if you look at the Twitter transaction — that is what I did. I sold Tesla stock to complete the Twitter transaction. And I would have done the same here.” He didn’t say how many of his shares he’d have to sell, however, to be able to fund the transaction. 

The plaintiffs’ lawsuit is based on Musk’s infamous 2018 tweets in which he said he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420.” He even said that he already had “[f]unding secured.” Musk first took the stand for this particular case last week to defend himself against the plaintiffs’ accusations that the tweets he made cost them significant financial losses. Tesla’s shares temporarily stopped trading after those tweets and remained volatile in the weeks that followed. He said at the time that just because he tweets something “does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly.”

This time, Musk reiterated his previous claim that he had an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take Tesla private. He told the court that the country was “unequivocal” in its support of the transaction, which ultimately didn’t go through. According to Bloomberg, the court discussed his communication and eventual falling out with Saudi fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan regarding the deal. A text exchange was reportedly presented to the jury, wherein Musk accused Al-Rumayyan of backing out of their handshake agreement. The Saudi official responded that he didn’t have sufficient information to be able to commit to the buyout and called Musk’s public announcement of their discussions “ill advised.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyer also asked Musk what many of us were probably wondering: If the $420 share price in his tweets was made as a joke in reference to marijuana. Apparently, it wasn’t a joke, and he chose it “because it reflected about a 20 percent premium on Tesla’s stock price.” Musk is expected to testify again on Tuesday, so we’ll likely hear more details about his failed bid to convert Tesla into a private entity. 

As Bloomberg notes, the judge in this case had already determined that his tweets were “objectively false and reckless.” However, the plaintiffs still have to prove that Musk knew his tweets were misleading and that his tweets caused their losses to win the case. Musk and Tesla previously had to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $20 million each to settle a separate lawsuit over the same tweets, accusing him of making “false and misleading statements” that could be constituted as fraud. The CEO said on the stand that he told the SEC about SpaceX and that the plaintiffs’ lawyer “deliberately exclud[ed] that from jurors.”

FTC asks court to hold Martin Shkreli in contempt for launching new drug company

Martin Shkreli, whom you may know as “Pharma Bro,” launched a new company last year called “Druglike, Inc.” Now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked a federal judge to hold him in contempt for failing to cooperate with the agency in its investigation to determine whether launching the company violates his lifetime industry ban. US District Court Judge Denise Cote imposed a lifetime ban on Shkreli that prohibits him from participating in the pharmaceutical industry early last year. Cote ruled that the former pharma exec orchestrated an illegal anticompetitive scheme to gain a monopoly over Daraprim, a life-saving anti-malarial and anti-parasitic drug. 

After Shkreli’s former company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, obtained the manufacturing license for Daraprim, it raised the drug’s prices from $17.50 to $750 per tablet. Cote sided with the FTC in the antitrust lawsuit the agency filed against Shkreli in 2020 and ordered him to pay $64.6 million in damages, in addition to imposing a lifetime industry ban against him. Prior to Druglike’s launch, Shkreli tried (and failed) to convince a judge to put the ban on hold, arguing that the public could benefit from his future contributions to the industry. Shkreli challenged the ban while he was serving time in federal prison after receiving a seven-year sentence in 2017 for defrauding investors. He was released from prison in May.

The FTC said it started asking Shkreli for a compliance report and access to relevant records, as well as asking him to sit for an interview regarding Druglike, in October 2022. However, the company co-founder kept on disregarding its “repeated requests.” The agency also said that Shkreli has yet to pay any amount of his $64.6 million fine. It’s now asking the court to order Shkreli to comply with its information requests within 21 days of its decision. 

In a press release (PDF) for its launch, Druglike described itself as “a Web3 drug discovery software platform.” The company said it’s building a “decentralized computing network” that “provides resources for anyone looking to start or contribute to early-stage drug discovery projects.” In a statement, Shkreli said “Druglike will remove barriers to early-stage drug discovery, increase innovation and allow a broader group of contributors to share the rewards.”

Google lays off most employees part of its Area 120 incubator

Google’s Area 120 division has been severely affected by the layoffs happening across Alphabet, according to Bloomberg and TechCrunch, which said the unit now has fewer than 100 employees after the most recent round of cuts. Area 120 is known as Google’s in-house incubator, which works on experimental apps and products. Those include GameSnacks, an HTML5-based platform that enables users to load and play games quickly even on poor connections and basic smartphones. Sundar Pichai established the division in 2016 to “provide a purpose-built home for bottom-up innovation at Google.” The division’s website reads: “Area 120 teams work on new products, experiences, and services every day.”

Alphabet recently admitted that it was cutting 12,000 jobs, which is around six percent of its global workforce. The layoffs “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” but it’s bound to affect certain divisions more than others, seeing as the company performed “a rigorous review… to ensure that [its] people and roles are aligned with [its] highest priorities as a company.”

A spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company has “made the difficult decision to wind down the majority of the Area 120 team.” TechCrunch says the division typically works on 20 projects at any given time, but only three will “graduate” or will be folded into Google later this year. Almost everyone who isn’t involved in those three projects has reportedly lost their jobs. 

During a round of cuts at Area 120 back in September, a Google spokesperson said that the division is “shifting its focus to projects that build on Google’s deep investment in AI and have the potential to solve important user problems.” It’s unclear if any of the three “graduating” projects are AI-related or if the remaining team members are working on anything artificial intelligence. According to a recent New York Times report, though, Google is gearing up to show off at least 20 AI-powered products and a chatbot for search this year.

Elon Musk defends ‘funding secured’ tweets in Tesla shareholder trial

Elon Musk said that just because he tweets something, it “does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly.” The Tesla chief took the witness stand in a San Francisco federal court to defend himself (and the tweets he made back in 2018) in a lawsuit filed by a group of the automaker’s shareholders. “I think you can absolutely be truthful but can you be comprehensive? Of course not,” he added, regarding Twitter’s character limits. If you’ll recall, Musk famously tweeted in August 2018 that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420” and that he was already able to secure funding. “Investor support is confirmed,” he said in a follow-up tweet.

The CEO later revealed that he was in talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which reportedly expressed interest in Tesla as part of the country’s bid to lessen its reliance on oil. However, the deal didn’t materialize, and he later penned a lengthy post on the automaker’s website to say that it’s staying public. 

As CNBC notes, shareholders blamed those “funding secured” tweets for their significant financial losses, leading them to file a class action lawsuit against Musk. Tesla’s shares apparently remained highly volatile in the weeks that followed. The executive, however, downplayed his tweets’ impact and said that they don’t necessarily affect stock prices: “There have been many cases where I thought that if I were to tweet something, the stock price would go down. For example, at one point I tweeted that I thought that, in my opinion, the stock price was too high…and it went went higher, which was, which is, you know, counterintuitive.”

In addition to the shareholder lawsuit, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk over his tweets, calling them “false and misleading statements” that could be constituted as fraud. Musk and Tesla paid $20 million each to settle with the SEC, and the executive had to step down as board chairman. The SEC also required company lawyers to approve any Tesla-related tweet Musk makes — a condition the CEO tried (and failed) to get out of last year. 

Aside from defending his tweets, Musk criticized short sellers during his testimony, telling the court that short-selling “should be made illegal.” He added: “It is a means for, in my opinion, bad people on Wall Street to steal money from investors. Not good.” Another piece of information to take away from his time on the witness stand is that nobody can tell Musk to stop tweeting. When lawyers asked him about the advice he got to refrain from posting on Twitter after calling a British cave diver a “pedo guy,” Musk said: “I continued to tweet, yes.”

According to Reuters, Musk only testified for less than 30 minutes and that he’s not done answering lawyers’ questions. He’s expected to take the witness stand again to explain why he wrote the funding tweets and why he insisted that he had Saudi Arabia’s backing. 

Amazon’s Kindle Kids e-readers are up to $50 off right now

Amazon is selling the 2022 Kindle Kids at a discount for the first time since it was released in September last year. The e-reader is currently on sale for $85 or $35 less than its retail price of $120. If your child wants a device with a bigger screen…

T-Mobile data breach compromised 37 million customers’ data

T-Mobile has admitted that hackers were able to steal the information of around 37 million postpaid and prepaid customers in another major data breach. The carrier said in a regulatory filing that it discovered the issue on January 5th, but that it bel…

Twitter’s Blue subscription comes to Android devices

Twitter Blue has arrived on Android, and just like on iOS, it will cost you $11 a month to pay for a subscription through Google Play. The social media website has updated its About page for Blue to add Android pricing for all the countries where the service is currently available, namely the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. 

Before this, you’d have to pay for a subscription via the web or an iOS device if you want to enjoy Blue’s perks on an Android phone. Take note, however, that paying through Google will cost you $3 more than paying through a web browser. By charging more when you pay via your device’s app store, Twitter is essentially passing the tech giants’ 30 percent commission onto you. If you don’t mind firing up a web browser to pay for Twitter Blue, you can score a year-long subscription for $84 per year, no matter what your phone’s operating system is. It’s a newly launched option that’s equivalent to paying $7 a month instead of $8. 

A Twitter Blue subscription will put a blue checkmark next to your name on the website and will give you access to features not yet available for non-paying users. One of those features lets you preview your tweet and gives you the option to “undo” it before it gets posted on your timeline. You also get access to bookmark folders, themes and custom app icons. But as TechCrunch notes, there’s no telling what Blue’s feature list will look like over the coming months: The company could very well add new perks or remove them in the future. The checkmark will likely remain as one of the service’s main selling points, however, seeing as Elon Musk previously referred to Twitter’s “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark” as “bullshit.”