Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Feb. 4 (Reuters)-A US jury ruled on Friday that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his company were not responsible for misleading investors. Earlier, Musk tweeted in 2018 that he had raised money for the company's privatisation.

Tesla shareholders are demanding billions of dollars in damages in the alleged Twitter fraud case against Musk. The decision is also important to Musk, who has been actively defending his ability to post widely. The jury reached its verdict about two hours after the start of deliberation.

Tesla shareholders claimed that Musk misled them in his tweet on August 7, 2018. Mr Musk said on Twitter at the time that he was considering taking the company private at $420 a share (currently about 2827 yuan), a premium of about 23 per cent to the previous day's closing price, and that "the money was already in place". Tesla shareholders said Musk lied when he said "investor support has been confirmed" on Twitter later in the day.

Tesla's share price soared after the tweet, but fell again after August 17, 2018, because it was clear that the acquisition would not happen. CTOnews.com learned that investors lost as much as $12 billion (currently about 80.76 billion yuan), according to an economist hired by Tesla shareholders.

During the three-week trial, Musk spent nearly nine hours on the witness stand, telling jurors that he believed Twitter was real. He said he had arranged the necessary financing, including verbal commitments from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund Public Investment fund. Mr Musk said the fund later reneged on its commitments.

Musk later testified that he believed he could sell enough shares in rocket company SpaceX to fund the acquisition and that SpaceX shares alone "felt financially secure". Musk also said he tweeted to put minority shareholders in the same position as big investors who knew about the deal. But he admitted that he had not received a formal commitment from the Saudi fund and other potential supporters.

Musk pointed out that his tweets generally did not always affect Tesla's shares as he expected. "just because I posted something on Twitter doesn't mean people will believe it or act accordingly."

Mr Musk's lawyer, Spiro, said Mr Musk's tweet that "the money was in place" was "technically inaccurate", but investors were only concerned about whether Mr Musk was considering an acquisition. "just because it's a bad tweet doesn't mean it's a fraud," he said in his closing statement. "

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