Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk attends the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China August 29, 2019.
Aly Song | Reuters
Elon Musk said in court on Wednesday that he does not want to be the CEO of any company.
He recently acquired and appointed himself as the CEO of social media giant Twitter, adding to his responsibilities as the CEO and “technoking” of electric vehicle maker Tesla, and CEO and CTO of the U.S. defense contractor SpaceX.
Musk also confirmed that the arrangement at Twitter is temporary. “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” he said.
Musk and Tesla are in the midst of a trial over the 2018 CEO pay package that the company granted him, an unparalleled compensation plan that has made Musk a centi-billionaire and the richest person on the planet.
Shareholder Richard J. Tornetta has sued Musk and Tesla alleging that the CEO compensation was excessive, and that its authorization by the Tesla board amounted to a breach of its fiduciary duty.
Musk explained during the testimony that CEO is not necessarily an apt description for the work he says he does at his companies.
He elaborated, “At SpaceX it’s really that I’m responsible for the engineering of the rockets and Tesla for the technology in the car that makes it successful. So, CEO is often viewed as somewhat of a business focused role but in reality, my role is much more that of an engineer developing technology and making sure that we develop breakthrough technologies and that we have a team of incredible engineers who can achieve those goals.”
He also said, “It’s my experience that great engineers will only work for a great engineer. That is my first duty, not that of CEO.”
Musk said he only called on Tesla employees to assist him at Twitter on a “voluntary basis,” and to work “after-hours” at Twitter. He said that no Tesla board member had called him to say it is not a good idea to use Tesla resources for one of his other, privately-held companies.
The Tesla CEO specified that, “This was an after hours– just if you’re interested in evaluating, helping me evaluate Twitter engineering… that’d be nice. I think it lasted for a few days and it was over.”
When a lawyer asked if he thought it was a good idea to be using Tesla assets at Twitter, Musk responded, “I didn’t think of this as using Tesla assets.” He added, “There’s 120,000 people at the company. This is de minimis.”
With all of his business commitments, Musk explained during his testimony that Tesla has taken more time than anything in recent years.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the trial asked whether it was a good idea for Musk to strike a combative attitude towards regulators, and specifically asked him about prior insults he lobbed at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“In general, I think the mission of the SEC is good but the question is whether that mission is being executed well,” he replied.
“In some cases I think it is not. The SEC fails to investigate things that they should and places far too much attention on thing that are not relevant. The recent FTX thing I think is an example of that. Why was there no attention given to FTX? Investors lost billions. Yet the SEC continues to hound me despite shareholders being greatly rewarded. This makes no sense.”
In fact, the SEC and several other regulators have reportedly launched investigations into collapsed crypto firm FTX, but it’s not clear if those investigations started prior to the firm’s sudden bankruptcy last week.
This news is developing, please check back for updates.
Employees move semiconductor testers on the assembly line of the Advantest Corp. plant in Ora, Japan on Aug. 10, 2012.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asian tech and chip-related stocks fell Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would go into effect as planned.
Trump also said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, having already levied 10% duties that came into effect in February.
Asian tech stocks were also pressured by the near 9% fall in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares overnight.
Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Advantest plunged as much as 9%, to its lowest level since last October, while Chipmaker Renesas Electronics lost 6.35%.
Tech investor SoftBank Group dropped 6.25%. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son plans to borrow $16 billion to invest in artificial intelligence, according to a news report that came out over the weekend.
Over in South Korea, shares in SK Hynix lost as much as 3.26%, while Samsung Electronics bucked the trend to rise nearly 1% following the launch of its Galaxy A series smartphones with AI-powered features.
Chinese AI-linked stocks also fell with Alibaba and Kingsoft Cloud down as much as 2.23% and 8.46% respectively.
Meanwhile, shopping platform Meituan lost 0.62%, electronic vehicle maker BYD plunged 6.60%, Xpeng traded 1.97% lower and Li Auto lost 2.68%.
Chinese tech major Tencent‘s shares were trading 0.91% higher in Hong Kong.
Nvidia’s headquarters on Feb. 26, 2025, in Santa Clara, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Malaysia said it will take “necessary action” against Malaysian companies if they are found to be involved in a fraud case linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China.
That comes after Singapore Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam reportedly said on Monday that the servers in the fraud case may have contained Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips which were then sent to Malaysia.
On Feb. 27, Singapore charged three men with fraud, with local broadcaster CNA saying it understood the cases are linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips.
“The question is whether Malaysia was a final destination or from Malaysia, it went to somewhere else, which we do not know for certain at this point,” Shanmugam told reporters.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister for investment, trade and industry said the country has no information that data center companies operating in Malaysia are “not using the chips that they are supposed to be using.”
He said such servers are imported by data center companies such as Microsoft, AWS and Google.
Singapore’s Shanmugam had said Nvidia’s chips were embedded in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies, before they went to Malaysia. He added that “there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers.”
When asked if Malaysia knew where the servers were now, Zafrul replied, “we don’t know,” adding that Malaysian authorities are discussing with the data center companies and checking if they have gone to the right parties.
“Right now, there’s no such cases in Malaysia to date, and we are investigating if they are. We’ll definitely discuss this with Singapore and well, the companies would then have to be held accountable by the relevant authorities,” he added.
CNA also reported two Singaporeans were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers.
Citing charge sheets, CNA said they allegedly made false representations in 2024 that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the “authorized ultimate consignee of end users.”
The charges also come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Department is looking into whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, Reuters said “organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.”
Zafrul told CNBC that Malaysia will be checking the chips’ destination, but added, “what I can say today [is] the chips are not meant to be in Malaysia in the first place. So the question is, why is it going out of Singapore?”
Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and chief executive officer of 23andme Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
23andMe‘s special committee of independent directors on Monday rejected CEO Anne Wojcicki’s proposal to take the distressed genetic testing company private.
Wojcicki submitted a proposal to the committee on Sunday, offering to acquire all of the company’s outstanding shares for 41 cents each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stock plunged 33% on Monday to close at $1.47, down more than 99% from its peak in 2021.
Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital submitted a prior bid in February to take the company private for $2.53 per share. Days later, New Mountain told Wojcicki it was no longer interested in participating in a potential acquisition and would discontinue discussions, the filing said.
23andMe’s special committee said that Wojcicki’s proposal represented an 84% decrease from the prior offer and determined not to go forward, according to a release on Monday.
“The Special Committee has reviewed Ms. Wojcicki’s acquisition proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and has unanimously determined to reject the proposal,” the directors said.
23andMe didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Following a turbulent 2024, 23andMe announced plans in January to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.