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Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at an event in Hawthorne, California April 30, 2015.

Patrick T. Fallon | Reuters

Attorneys for Tesla and Elon Musk are asking a federal judge in San Francisco to move, or delay, a forthcoming trial from Northern California to Western Texas, saying they won’t be able to find unbiased jurors and citing “local negativity” toward Musk.

Musk, and other current and former Tesla board members, are set to face a jury in a shareholder class action that claims the CEO manipulated Tesla’s stock in 2018 when he tweeted that he was considering taking his electric vehicle company private at $420 per share, and had “funding secured” to do so.

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Tesla’s stock trading initially halted, then shares were highly volatile for weeks after the tweets.

That year, Musk resided in California and Tesla was headquartered in Palo Alto. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO moved his residence to Texas in 2020, and his electric vehicle company relocated its headquarters to Austin in 2021.

In 2022, Northern California Senior District Judge Edward M. Chen, who is overseeing the trial, ruled that Musk’s statements in 2018 were false and that he tweeted them knowingly.

The forthcoming trial and jury will decide whether Musk’s now infamous tweets mattered to shareholders, if and how they impacted Tesla’s share price, and whether the company or its directors should be held liable and pay damages.

In a motion to transfer venue, attorneys representing Tesla and Musk argue that the CEO has garnered extensive and negative publicity in California after taking over a San Francisco-based social media company, Twitter, in October 2022.

Musk appointed himself CEO of Twitter, and has cut thousands of employees in a series of chaotic firings and layoffs since the deal closed.

In a recent public appearance in San Francisco, Musk was booed after comedian Dave Chappelle invited him on stage.

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Alex Spiro, who has represented Musk in several court matters, argued in this latest filing:

“A substantial portion of the jury pool in this District is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies as individual prospective jurors—or their friends and relatives—may have been personally impacted. The existing baseline bias has been compounded, expanded, and reinforced by the negative and inflammatory local publicity surrounding the events.”

Spiro added in the filing that the “negativity toward Mr. Musk was not isolated to the press.” He said there are regular protests and picketing activity in front of Musk’s offices in San Francisco, adding that some are “endorsed and encouraged by local political figures.”

Musk and his attorneys have previously argued that his statements about a possible take-private deal for Tesla in 2018 did not violate the law.

The Tesla CEO has repeatedly claimed that he made a handshake deal with investors from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take Tesla private at $420 per share. Text messages revealed in another trial in 2022 suggested Saudi PIF investors had not fully agreed to fund a Tesla deal.

Court filings this month in the securities class action show that Musk’s attorneys have subpoenaed four people who help run the Saudi Public Investment Fund to testify in this trial including Naif Al Mogren, Saad Al Jarboa, Turqi Alnowaise and Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

Read the filing from In Re: Tesla Inc. Securities Litigation (Case 3:18-cv-04865-EMC) here:

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Technology

Nvidia down 30% from high as tech-led sell-off hits ‘Magnificent Seven’

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Nvidia down 30% from high as tech-led sell-off hits 'Magnificent Seven'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2025.

Steve Marcus | Reuters

Nvidia has lost nearly a third of its value just two months after notching a fresh high.

The leading chipmaker slumped about 5% on Monday, building on last week’s losses as heavy selling continued across the tech sector. The popular artificial intelligence stock has shed about a fifth of its market cap since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The stock hit an intraday high of $153.13 on Jan. 7.

Tariff fears and growth concerns have rocked technology stocks, including Nvidia, over the past week, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping more than 4%. The Nasdaq traded at a six-month low on Monday.

Many technology companies rely on parts and manufacturing overseas and new levies could push up prices. That has also sparked worries of a U.S. recession, which Trump did not rule out over the weekend.

Tesla led the declines among the “Magnificent Seven” names, plummeting more than 13%. The Elon Musk-backed electric vehicle company has plunged 16% over the past week and shed nearly 44% since Trump took office in January. The stock is also coming off its longest weekly losing streak in history as a public company.

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Elon Musk’s X suffers multiple outages

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Elon Musk’s X suffers multiple outages

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Elon Musk’s social media platform X experienced several outages on Monday morning, leaving some users unable to load the site.

Nearly 40,000 users reported problems with the platform around 10 a.m. ET,  according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users who spot glitches and report them to the service. Around 28,000 people were experiencing issues as of 11:30 a.m. ET.

When X resumed loading for users Monday afternoon, Musk said the company had suffered a “massive cyberattack.” Musk did not provide any evidence, and CNBC could not independently verify that a cyberattack took place.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022. The Tesla CEO slashed the company’s headcount by about 80% from 7,500 employees to 1,300 workers, and just 550 full-time engineers, by January 2023.

X has experienced several large-scale outages since Musk’s takeover. Users reported problems with the platform in December 2022 and with the site’s desktop app in July 2023, for instance.

The timing of the X outage couldn’t have been worse for NFL fans, who rely on the service for news updates. The first day of the NFL’s free agency tampering window began at 12 p.m. ET with the service down, sending fans searching for other options such as linear TV and Bluesky to get their news on player signings.

— CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed reporting.

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Watch: Elon Musk on X subscriptions: ‘Free speech isn’t exactly free it costs a little bit’

Elon Musk on X subscriptions: 'Free speech isn't exactly free it costs a little bit'

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Bitcoin falls to November low under $80,000 on heightened recession fears

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Bitcoin falls to November low under ,000 on heightened recession fears

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Bitcoin dropped under the $80,000 level Monday, dragged by the continued selling pressure in the equities market.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 5% at $78,714.96, its lowest level since November, according to Coin Metrics.

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Bitcoin in the past day

Shares of companies linked to the crypto space also slid. Coinbase fell roughly 14%. Robinhood lost 17%, and bitcoin proxy play Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, declined 16%.

Bitcoin ETFs are coming off their fourth week in a row of outflows. They logged $867 million of outflows last week, bringing the four-week total to $4.75 billion, according to CoinShares. Continued bearishness pushed crypto prices even lower over the weekend, with bitcoin dropping sharply on Sunday evening to the $80,000 level for the first time since Feb. 28.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a U.S. bitcoin reserve and a digital asset stockpile late last week, disappointing some investors. However, macro uncertainty was the key driver of the accelerated downward move Monday, after Trump over the weekend didn’t rule out the possibility of a recession in the U.S.

Absent a crypto-specific catalyst, macro concerns are likely to continue weighing on cryptocurrency prices in the near term. This week, the market will be watching for key economic indicators, including the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) Tuesday, the consumer price index on Wednesday and the producer price index slated for Thursday.

Although investors expect cryptocurrency prices are likely to pull back even more before making a run for a new record, their positive outlook on the year driven by regulatory tailwinds is still intact.

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