Elon Musk is being sued by investors over false claims he made in 2018 about taking Tesla private, which caused wild gyrations in the electric carmaker's stock price.
Elon Musk's fraud trial over a series of tweets about his electric car firm Tesla began on Wednesday. Investors are suing the CEO over claims he crashed the company's stock price by claiming he had secured financial backing to take the company private.
In 2018, Musk wrote on Twitter that he had found buyers willing to buyout shareholders for $72 million. He then fired off a follow-up tweet that made the deal seem like a foregone conclusion.
This caused the value of Tesla to skyrocket and then abruptly stop climbing when it became apparent that he did not have the amount of funding he claimed. Investors say this cheated them out of "billions" after the company's stock price became highly volatile after the news.
The incident also attracted the attention of US regulators, to whom Musk had to pay a $40 million fine and agree to step down as Tesla chairman.
Musk has maintained his innocence, saying that he believed he had enough money after meeting with members of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, and that he paid the fine under duress.
The nine-member jury at the California trial will largely be responsible for determining Musk's motives in making the claims, which Judge Edward Chen has already decreed were false.
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