Musk Dodges Questions About Twitter Deal Breakup

The Guardian reports:

Elon Musk reportedly talked about the colonization of Mars and boosting Earth’s birthrates during his keynote address at Allen & Co’s Sun Valley conference on Saturday, but he avoided discussing his attempt to withdraw from his $44bn bid to buy Twitter.

The billionaire accused the social media firm of failing to provide information on bot accounts, among other things, making observers wonder whether he would address such complaints at his speech scheduled for the next day.

But Musk – who is also chief of the private rocket company SpaceX – declined to do so. Instead, he mused about how he viewed Mars as a “civilian life insurance” if a disaster ever wiped out Earth.

Fortune reports:



As both sides prepare for a lengthy court battle, some Twitter influencers are floating an alternate theory for the change of heart: The bots were never the problem, merely a vehicle through which to covertly sell Tesla options that were about to expire.

In a letter addressed to Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, Musk’s legal team accused Twitter of making “false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relief when entering into the Merger Agreement.”

Musk had put the acquisition deal “temporarily on hold” in May so his team could investigate the number of spam or bot accounts on the social media platform.