With the Twitter turmoil hanging a dark cloud of Elon Musk, shareholders worry the CEO could step down from his role at Tesla if forced to purchase the platform, but Musk ensured them his talented team could continue the work even if he ‘was kidnapped by aliens‘ or returned to his home planet.
The humorous remarks were made during Tesla’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders held Thursday at the company’s new headquarters in Austin, Texas, and were given during the Q&A portion of the presentation.
The question came from Tesla bull and managing partner of The Future Fund, Gary Black, who asked: ‘So how does the board think about your succession and especially when you a judge who’s going to decide in a couple months whether or not you have to take over Twitter. How would you split your time?’
After ensuring the crowd Tesla would live on, Musk then said ‘I am not leaving to be clear.’
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Elon Musk is not worried about the fate of Tesla, even if he has to stepped down from his role as CEO. He said the company would succeed even if he was abducted by aliens
The billionaire continued to explain that Tesla is definitely gathering a lot of momentum, which he was referring to an earlier announcement during the presentation about the carmaker recently produced its three millionth electric vehicle since inception in 2004.
‘I wonder how many cars we will have in 10 year,’ Musk said while taking a quiet pause to reflect.
’10 years ago we had less than 3,000 cars and now we’ve made three million.’
Someone in the audience quickly yelled out ‘300 million,’ which triggered a laugh from Musk who quickly said that ‘100 million is pretty doable.’
The remarks were made during Tesla’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders held Thursday at the company’s new headquarters in Austin, Texas, and were given during the Q&A portion of the presentation
The question came from Gary Black, who asked: ‘So how does the board think about your succession and especially when you a judge who’s going to decide in a couple months whether or not you have to take over Twitter. How would you split your time?
According to the billionaire this will be done by expanding the four fully-operating Gigafactories into 12 and Tesla will likely reveal a location of a new factory later this year.
However, Musk still has to face the lawsuit against him filed by Twitter.
The Tesla CEO had offered to purchase the social media platform for $44 billion, but then backed out claiming Twitter failed to provide enough information on the number of fake accounts on the site.
On Wednesday, Twitter denied in a court filing that it had deprived its would-be acquirer of necessary information or misrepresented details about its business.
That fate of that acquisition, which Musk agreed to without taking the time to examine the details of Twitter’s business, now rests with a Delaware court where Twitter sued to force Musk to complete the deal. The case is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.
The court’s decision could ultimately determine the future of a social platform used daily by 238 million people around the globe — a small audience by the standards of Facebook and other major platforms, but one that include political leaders, major entertainers and experts on a variety of subjects. Until January 2021, it was also home to the then-U.S. president, Donald Trump.
In an unexpected twist, Twitter was able to file its response to Musk before Musk’s own counterclaims have surfaced in public. A judge ruled on Wednesday that Musk’s counterclaim will be made public by Friday.
Musk also announced that Tesla had produced its three millionth electric vehicle
Parts of Musk’s counterclaim, however, was included in Twitter’s response. These include accusing the company of fraud and ‘delay tactics’ and only providing Musk ‘sanitized, incomplete information’ in answer to his questions about spam accounts and other company metrics.
While Twitter has claimed that Musk is inventing reasons to get out of buying the company, Musk’s lawyers say that Twitter is the one holding back the deal by ‘dragging its feet’ and providing insufficient data to the billionaire’s requests.
In a reply filed Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court, Twitter calls Musk’s reasoning ‘a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive.’
Musk is also dealing with a lawsuit from Twitter, which he touched on at the meeting. He told the audience that Twitter fit into the grand vision for his holding company. He said that since he uses Twitter a lot, with more than 100 million followers, he knows what to do with it
‘The Counterclaims are a made-for-litigation tale that is contradicted by the evidence and common sense,’ Twitter’s response says. ‘Musk invents representations Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported representations.’
At the same time, the response says, Musk also accused Twitter of breaching their agreement by ‘stonewalling’ his information requests.
Representatives for Musk did not immediately return a message for comment Thursday, although Musk briefly talked about Twitter at Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting.
He told the audience that Twitter fit into the grand vision for his holding company. He said that since he uses Twitter a lot, with more than 100 million followers, he knows what to do with it.
‘I do understand the product quite well,’ he said. ‘So I think I’ve got a good sense of where to point the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better,’ he said.
