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Alex Spiro, attorney to Elon Musk, center, departs court in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023.

Benjamin Fanjoy | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared in a San Francisco federal court on Friday to defend tweets he posted to his tens of millions of followers in August 2018.

The tweets said he had “funding secured” to take his electric vehicle company private for $420 per share, and that “investor support” for such a deal was “confirmed.”

Tesla’s stock trading initially halted after the tweets, then shares were highly volatile for weeks. Musk later said that he had been in discussions with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and felt sure that funding would come through at his proposed price. A deal never materialized.

The SEC charged Musk and Tesla with civil securities fraud after the tweets. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million fines to the agency, and struck a revised settlement agreement that required Musk to temporarily relinquish his role as chairman of the board at Tesla.

His 2018 tweets also triggered a shareholder class action lawsuit from Tesla investors. They alleged that Musk’s tweets misled them and said relying on his statements to make trades cost them significant amounts of money.

The shareholders’ trades in question took place during a 10-day period before Musk seemed to admit a take-private deal was not going to happen in 2018.

Musk said under oath on Friday that it’s difficult to link Tesla’s stock price to his tweets.

“There have been many cases where I thought that if I were to tweet something, the stock price would go down,” Musk said. “For example, at one point I tweeted that I thought that, in my opinion, the stock price was too high…and it went went higher, which was, which is, you know, counterintuitive.”

A big increase in trading volume after he tweeted

It’s rare for top executives at publicly traded companies to discuss their stock price because any commentary can influence price movements.

Daniel Taylor, director of the Wharton Forensics Analytics Lab and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed every trade in Tesla stock occurring on Aug. 7, 2018, the day that Musk tweeted. He calculated the total trading volume every minute from the time the market opened through the time of Musk’s tweets about a buyout. 

Taylor found that the trading volume the minute Musk tweeted, at 12:48 p.m. ET that day, was over $350 million, and the trading volume for Tesla shares the next minute was over $250 million. By comparison, the average volume five minutes before Musk tweeted was $32 million per minute. The minute before Musk tweeted, trading volume was $24 million.  

“It is generally true that correlation is not causation,” Taylor told CNBC on Friday, after Musk’s first day on the witness stand. “However, I am unaware of any alternative explanation for a 10-fold increase in trading volume the same minute that Elon Musk tweeted.”

Musk also testified about his low opinion of short sellers on Friday.

“I believe short selling should be made illegal,” Musk said, referring to short sellers as “bad people on Wall Street” who “steal” from other investors. He said they also plant stories in the media to “get the stock to go down” and will “do anything in their power to make a company die.”

Tesla was among the most heavily shorted stocks in August 2018, when Musk made the statements about taking Tesla private. Tesla’s share price surged about 10% during trading that day. Short sellers face enormous losses when shares in a given company climb higher.

Some of the plaintiffs in the trial that’s underway claim that Musk’s “funding secured” tweets were intended to put upward price pressure on Tesla’s stock driving a so-called “short squeeze.”

Musk’s testimony is not yet complete and the court plans to hear from him again on Monday.

WATCH: Musk testifies over tweets

Tesla CEO Elon Musk to testify over 2018 'funding secured' tweets

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images

Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.

The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.

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SoftBank Group shares

Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.

Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.

Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.” 

Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.

TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.

Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.

The worst performing stocks on the index were Kuaishou Technology which declined 4.8%, JD Health International which dropped 3.31% and Horizon Robotics which lost 2.29%.

Losses were also seen tech majors Alibaba Group, down 1.44%, and Xiaomi Corp which lost 1.34%.

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.

Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.

The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.

Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.

Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.

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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.

Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.

By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.

What to know about Palantir's engineer-led sales strategy

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Databricks says it’s valued at over $100 billion in latest funding round

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Databricks says it's valued at over 0 billion in latest funding round

Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks speaks on CNBC.

CNBC

Databricks has just entered an exclusive club.

The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.

In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.

Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.

Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.

“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”

Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.

Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.

Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.

WATCH: Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

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