The Tesla boss, owner of SpaceX and Twitter, is in court to testify about a case that happened almost five years ago. At the time, Elon Musk tweeted that he had found a private investor to buy Tesla, only to have it fall through and the investors feel cheated out of big money.
Elon Musk in court
“I’m considering taking Tesla private for $420 a share. Financing secured”, Elon Musk tweeted at the time. That $420 per share was a relatively high amount, so the TSLA stock price shot up significantly as investors saw it as a quick profit opportunity, only for the sale to fall through and the share price to fall again.
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The company then announced that it did not have a buyer. According to Musk, he was deterred by shareholder backlash (who are now suing him, and if Musk loses, he will have to pay billions of dollars in damages). His plan was said to be based on negotiations with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, which was to provide the necessary money because Google, or parent Alphabet, had a “sustained interest” in acquiring Tesla.
Tesla could end up in the hands of Apple, but also Google
According to Business Insider, Musk said Google had a “sustained interest” in acquiring Tesla, which encouraged him to try to take the company private with Saudi funds. So thanks to the lawsuit, we are now learning some interesting circumstances that could have led to Tesla being in the hands of Apple, or Google for that matter, today.
Musk has also reportedly had talks in the past with the head of Apple, to whom he could have sold the electric car company. It was in 2018, right at the time of the Model 3 crisis, when Tesla was just about to go bankrupt and Musk was even sleeping right in the factory. But the situation was eventually resolved in a different way and Tesla stayed on the stock market. Today, it is doing much better, doubling its profits to more than $12 billion last year alone.
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