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Elon Musk misled Twitter investors while trying to get out of acquisition, jury says

At the time, Musk had tweeted that Twitter had too many bots, which is why he was trying to renege on his commitment to buy the company.

By TechCrunch

• March 20, 2026 at 11:29 PM

Elon Musk misled Twitter investors while trying to get out of acquisition, jury says Photo: TechCrunch

A civil jury in California on Friday ruled that Elon Musk intentionally misled Twitter investors when he tried to back out of his $44 billion acquisition of the platform in 2022.

At the time, Musk had tweeted that Twitter had too many bots, which is why he later tried to renege on the acquisition.

(Twitter ended up suing Musk to force him to seal the deal.)
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk wrote on the platform that he has since renamed X.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users https://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
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After acquiring Twitter, Musk rebranded the company as X, then merged it with his newer AI company, xAI .

The combined company was valued at $113 billion , according to Musk.

Then, last month, SpaceX merged with xAI .

Musk has said that the merger was motivated by his desire to build data centers in space.