Elon Musk once made a seven-word complaint about Tesla’s stock price, causing the company’s stock market value to plummet by $14 billion.
After joining as Tesla’s largest shareholder in February 2004, Musk, 53, was appointed CEO in October 2008.
Since succeeding Ze’ev Drori, the entrepreneur has gone on to launch a Tesla Roadster into space, release the long-delayed Cybertruck, and earn the title of world’s richest person. But Technoking’s rise has not been without controversy.
In 2018, Musk made an inaccurate claim that he was close to completing a Tesla acquisition, leading to a complaint from the US Department of Justice.
The settlement involved the billionaire agreeing not to make future market-moving statements without first being cleared by his company’s legal department.
The pre-approval covers communications ‘in any format, including but not limited to social media posts (e.g., Twitter)’.
Two years later, Musk found himself in trouble again on Twitter, now known as X, after complaining about the car company’s stock price.
“In my opinion, Tesla’s stock price is too high,” he tweeted to his 33 million followers at the time.
Following the outspoken outburst, Tesla’s stock price reportedly began to plummet.
At the time, CNBC reported that Tesla shares fell as much as 12 percent before closing at 10.3 following the tweet. Meanwhile, the BBC reported at the time that the carmaker’s value had fallen by as much as $14 billion, while the outburst also wiped out $3 billion of Musk’s Tesla stake.
Musk later admitted to the Wall Street Journal that his damaging post had not been reviewed by the company before he posted it. After the message, Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told Reuters: “We consider these comments by Musk to be sarcastic and Elon being Elon.
“It’s certainly a headache for investors to see him venture into this space because his tweets are still hot and [Wall Street] is clearly frustrated.”
In other news, the Space X founder has found himself in hot water again after being named in a criminal lawsuit filed by Olympic boxer Imane Khelif. The Algerian, 25, has been in the spotlight after being embroiled in a gender eligibility controversy after her opponent Angela Carini, 25, walked out of a boxing match after just 46 seconds.
After Carini pulled the plug, reports began circulating that Khelif had failed the International Boxing Association (IBA) gender eligibility test. Despite Khelif being born female, high-profile figures like Musk and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling have taken to social media to make statements about the situation.
The pair have been named in the lawsuit for allegedly engaging in “severe online harassment.”