Elon Musk testifies he would have sold SpaceX stock to take Tesla private in 2018
Elon Musk speaks near a Falcon 9 rocket during his announcement that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the first private passenger who will fly around the Moon aboard the SpaceX BFR launch vehicle.
DAVID MCNEW | AFP | Getty Images
Elon Musk told a San Francisco federal court on Monday that he could have sold shares of SpaceX to take Tesla private in 2018. He was then, and still is, the CEO and largest shareholder of both companies.
Musk is being sued by Tesla shareholders for a series of tweets he wrote in August 2018 saying he had “funding secured” to take the automaker private for $420 per share, and that “investor support” for such a deal was “confirmed.” Trading in Tesla was halted after his tweets, and its share price remained volatile for weeks.
The shareholders in the certified class action lawsuit allege that Musk’s tweets were reckless and false, and relying on his statements to make investment decisions cost them significant amounts of money.
Musk would later claim that he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and was sure that funding would come through at his proposed price based on a handshake. However, the deal never materialized.
During his second day on the witness stand, Musk claimed that another reason he said he had “funding secured” for a deal back in 2018 was that he could have sold shares of SpaceX, a U.S. defense contractor and satellite internet company that he also runs, in order to finance the transaction.
Musk said under oath, “SpaceX stock alone meant ‘funding secured’ by itself. It’s not that I want to sell SpaceX stock but I could have, and if you look at the Twitter transaction — that is what I did. I sold Tesla stock to complete the Twitter transaction. And I would have done the same here.”
Musk did not say how many shares in his reusable rocket maker he would have been able to sell, to whom, and at what price in order to finance the Tesla buyout.
In April 2018, SpaceX said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had raised about $214 million as part of a financing round in which it was seeking more than $500 million in total equity funding.
An attorney for the shareholders, Nicholas L. Porritt of Levi & Korsinsky, asked Musk if the price he suggested for Tesla shares was a joke because 420 is a reference to cannabis in pop culture.
Musk insisted that this was coincidental. He said, “There is some, I think, karma around 420… I should question whether that is good or bad karma at this point.”
This is not the first legal action Musk has faced over his tweets. The SEC charged Musk and Tesla with civil securities fraud shortly after he sent them, and they paid separate $20 million fines to the federal agency to settle the charges. They later signed a revised consent decree that required Musk to relinquish his role as chairman of the board at Tesla temporarily, and to have a securities lawyer vet tweets that contain material business information about Tesla before he posts them.
Musk recently became the CEO of social media business Twitter after leading a $44 billion leveraged buyout of the company in October 2022. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz is the social media company’s second-largest shareholder after Musk. Last November, Sen. Chris Murphy, D.-Conn, sent a letter to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States requesting a review of the financing for the Musk-Twitter deal.
Technology
How Broadcom’s big OpenAI deal fits into the data center boom and what it means for the AI trade
Oracle CEO, Clay Magouyrk, sits down with CNBC’s David Faber on Oct. 13, 2025.
CNBC
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, one of the two people tapped last month to lead the software company, is confident that OpenAI will be able to cover the costs of the massive amount of cloud infrastructure services it consumes.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber at Oracle’s AI World conference on Monday, Magouyrk said “of course” OpenAI can pay $60 billion for a year’s worth of cloud resources. In July, OpenAI agreed to a five-year deal with Oracle that’s worth over $300 billion.
“Just look at the rate at which they’ve grown to, you know, almost a billion users. That’s just unheard of,” said Magouyrk, who sat alongside fellow Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia for the interview in Las Vegas.
OpenAI said last week that its flagship ChatGPT chatbot, which was publicly launched less than three years ago, now has 800 million weekly active users. In 2024, OpenAI recorded a $5 billion net loss.
Sicilia said Oracle has started integrating OpenAI artificial intelligence models into a patient portal for viewing electronic health records. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner for about $28 billion in 2022.
“I’ve seen the results, and I really do think that they’re going to have a dramatic impact on industries, on enterprises of all types,” Sicilia said of OpenAI.
OpenAI rents out Nvidia graphics chips to run models through Oracle, as well as CoreWeave, Google and Microsoft. At the same time, the company is designing a custom AI processor that Broadcom will build. Earlier on Monday, Broadcom and OpenAI said they will jointly deploy 10 gigawatts worth of the new OpenAI chips.
Building out that much infrastructure requires a hefty amount of new energy.
“I think it’s a factor of time, not a factor of if we’ll have enough power,” Sicilia said.
Oracle shares rose almost 6% on Monday. The stock has gained 86% this year, lifting Oracle’s market cap close to $900 billion.
WATCH: Oracle CEO Magouyrk: ‘Of course’ OpenAI can pay $60 billion per year
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