NEW DELHI: A US federal jury in California has found Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk liable for misleading Twitter (now called X) shareholders in 2022 using false statements that depressed the company’s share price.
Allegedly, Musk sought to renegotiate or abandon a $44 billion takeover of X with his false statement.
Jurors concluded that two of three challenged statements Musk made in May 2022, including tweets and comments on a podcast claiming Twitter had too many fake, were intentionally made to mislead caused shareholders into selling their stock, according to multiple reports.
However, the court absolved him of charges that he engaged in a "scheme" to defraud investors. The panel rejected two other fraud claims but held that Musk’s conduct amounted to intentional deception.
Musk was defending charges that he falsely claimed on social media that Twitter underreported a number of fake and spam accounts, known as bots, on its platform.
Twitter investors are likely to receive an amount of $2.6 billion in damages following the verdict, multiple reports cited Mark Molumphy, a lawyer for the investors, as saying.
Musk's net worth as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index stood at $661.1 billion. Musk‑led social media platform X had recently warned that it will suspend creators from its revenue‑sharing programme for 90 days if they post AI‑generated video of armed conflict without disclosure about AI use.
X Product Head Nikita Bier announced the measure as part of its broader effort to curb manipulation and maintain access to authentic information during wartime.
The company recently introduced a “Made with AI” label on the platform to flag to users content created with artificial intelligence. Amid the US‑Israeli military campaign against Iran and the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Musk and Bier recently announced that traffic on the platform had hit a new all-time record.