Category Archives: Elon Musk

Win McNamee

A new wave of investor optimism seems to be pushing Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock higher in the aftermath of its shareholder meeting (held on 16th May 2023), wherein CEO Elon Musk highlighted Tesla's long-term business prospects in emerging areas such as autonomous driving [FSD] and robotics [Optimus].

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In late-2022/early-2023, I was incredibly bullish on Tesla in the mid to low $100s, at a time when Mr. Market was selling it off like a drunken psycho on a daily basis. After having accumulated Tesla for several months in the mid to low $100s, we sold half of our Tesla position at ~$194 a few weeks ago as the wild rally in TSLA took a pause at a key technical level at ~$200-215.

While market participants are clearly getting excited about Tesla once again, I am sticking to a "Neutral" rating for TSLA after having shifted my stance in light of Tesla's Q1 earnings back in April. If you have been following my work on Tesla, you know that my rationale for the downgrade was based on greater macroeconomic uncertainties, dangers of Tesla's recession playbook [making it a binary bet on FSD], and ominous technical setup. Find a more detailed explanation here:

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Despite Elon Musk's dire warnings on the economy, investors have been piling into TSLA stock, which apparently looks set to re-test the neckline of its head and shoulders pattern. As you can observe in the chart below, Tesla's stock has already been rejected twice at this key technical level. If Tesla fails to break past this area of resistance, technically, the stock could be headed back down to the mid $100s [and even to the low $100s] in a continuation of the reverse gamma squeeze we saw in late-2022.

WeBull Desktop

In this note, we will discuss major takeaways from Tesla's Annual Shareholder Meeting. And then check up on TSLA's ominous-looking technical chart.

Keeping in tradition with past investor events, Tesla's 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Musk's subsequent CNBC interview (with David Faber) were filled with lots of hyperbolic statements such as "FSD could be the ChatGPT moment for Tesla" and "Demand for Tesla's Optimus Humanoid Bot could be 10 billion units."

Here's a list of noteworthy announcements from the meeting:

The above list covers all the key developments from Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, and since this event has been widely covered, we will not go deeper into it in this note. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest you watch the presentation at Tesla.com or read this detailed SA note.

Now, let's discuss Tesla's business outlook in light of its shareholder meeting.

While Musk stoked the hype engine quite a bit with positive commentary on ambitious projects such as FSD, Cybertruck, Optimus humanoid bot, and two new EV vehicle models (likely a compact car and a Van), none of these are likely to move the needle for Tesla in the near-term.

That said, Tesla's recession playbook is still expected to result in volume growth during 2023. According to consensus street estimates (and Musk), Tesla is likely to do $100B in revenue this year.

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Going forward, consensus analyst estimates peg CAGR sales growth to be in the low-to-mid-20s, which is a far cry from where Tesla's growth has been over the past decade. Given Tesla's scale, I think a slowdown is natural; however, a growth slowdown raises question marks over TSLA's valuation premium. Now, bulls like to value Tesla as a high-margin software company, whereas bears prefer a valuation more in line with other automakers.

Personally, I think the reality is somewhere in between. As I said in my previous note, Tesla is turning into a binary bet on FSD. According to Musk, FSD could boost Tesla's gross margins to ~80%. While I am skeptical about that figure, I think that if FSD achieves full autonomy, Tesla can deliver software-like margins. In this scenario, Tesla would deserve a multiple similar to an Apple Inc. (AAPL) (~25-30x earnings) and not a Ford Motor Company (F) (~5-10x earnings).

Will Tesla FSD reach full autonomy in 2023 or 2024? I don't know. While the likes of Cathie Wood (and many Tesla bulls) think it could happen this year, the jury is still out there. As an investor, I prefer to wait for evidence before trying to model something like FSD into my valuation estimate for the company. And so, I am not altering my model based on Musk's positive FSD commentary from the annual shareholder meeting.

With Q1 results coming (more or less) in line with expectations, I am sticking to most of my pre-earnings assumptions for Tesla. However, in order to factor in the added risk of Tesla turning into a binary bet on FSD due to Musk's recession playbook, I raised our model's "Required IRR" from 15% to 20%.

Also, Tesla's recession playbook is killing its free cash flow ("FCF") generation, and in the interest of improving the margin of safety in our model, I reduced the "Buyback as a % of FCF" (capital return program) assumption from 25% to 0%.

Here's my updated valuation for Tesla:

TQI Valuation Model (TQIG.org)

According to these results, Tesla's fair value is ~$155 per share. With the stock trading at $188 per share, it is currently overvalued by ~17.5%. Now, I am happy to pay a premium for a high-quality company like Tesla; however, is the risk/reward attractive enough to justify an investment at current levels?

TQI Valuation Model (TQIG.org)

Assuming a base case P/FCF exit multiple of 25x, I see Tesla hitting $377 per share by 2027. As can be seen below, Tesla is projected to deliver CAGR returns of 14.94% for the next five years, which more or less meets my investment hurdle rate of 15%.

However, the valuation is not exciting enough to justify a long position by itself, as was the case in late-2022 when Tesla was trading in the low $100s. Since then, macroeconomic conditions have worsened, with multiple bank failures threatening a credit crunch for the economy and a demand crunch for Tesla. In response to flagging demand, Tesla's management has instituted multiple price cuts this year, and this move is causing margin pressures. The longer Musk and Co. execute this aggressive playbook, Tesla's margins are likely to remain under pressure. While we are modeling Tesla using long-term steady-state margins, Mr. Market is a far short-sighted person, and he could sell TSLA off during lean economic times.

And Musk warned about this during the annual shareholder meeting (emphasis added):

This is going to be a challenging 12 months, I sort of want to be realistic about it that Tesla is not immune to the global economic environment. I expect things to be just at a macroeconomic level difficult for at least the next 12 months. Like, Tesla will get through it, and we'll do well and I think we'll see a lot of companies go bankrupt.

The economy moves in cycles, and we've had a very long period of upcycle, and next twelve months will be [I think] difficult for everyone. During Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, Warren and Charlie actually said this year Berkshire companies are going to make less money. These are very well run organizations and that is generally true for the economy. It's important to remember that there are good times, and there are dark times, which are followed by good times. So my advice would be -

Don't look at the market for the next 12 months. If there's a dip, buy the dip, and you'll not be sorry. My guess is tough times for a year and then Tesla will emerge stronger than ever. Net present value of future cash flows will be incredibly high in my opinion.

The long-term future for Tesla remains bright; however, near-term price action is likely to be volatile, and the technical chart does look ominous.

Earlier in this note, we looked at the H&S pattern on Tesla's chart, and in my view, another rejection from the neckline would be extremely bearish for the stock. From a technical perspective, a breakdown of an H&S formation could result in a downward move equivalent to the gap between the head and the neckline. In Tesla's case, that level falls in the range of $40-60 (based on how you draw the neckline [horizontal or slanted]).

Now, I am not saying Tesla, Inc. stock is headed down to the mid-double digits; however, technicals suggest that this is a possible outcome. From a valuation perspective, Tesla can trade at such levels if it loses growth in a dire economy and the stock gets priced like a traditional automaker (~5-10x earnings). Hence, it is not unrealistic.

WeBull Desktop

While I don't think Tesla should be valued like a traditional automaker, I wouldn't rule it out, as Mr. Market can do crazy things. That said, I would view such a sharp selloff as a massive buying opportunity. Now, such a move is very unlikely to materialize until and unless we end up in a deep recession, which is certainly not my base case right now.

In the short term, I think a move down to $145 is very much on the table, given we still haven't filled the gap there. And if Tesla fails to hold that level, I can even see a re-test of recent lows, i.e., the low $100s.

WeBull Desktop

In a nutshell, Tesla's technical chart is looking ominous. A breakout of the neckline at $215 would make me change my view here. However, for the time being, I think investors can afford to remain patient with Tesla, Inc. stock and wait for a better entry point. If Tesla gets down to the mid-$100s, I will resume accumulation via a DCA plan.

Key Takeaway: I continue to rate Tesla, Inc. stock "Neutral" at ~$188 per share.

Thank you for reading, and happy investing! Please share any questions, thoughts, and/or concerns in the comments section below or DM me.

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Tesla Stock: You Have Been Pumped And Warned By Elon Musk ... - Seeking Alpha

JPMorgan global market strategist Jack Manley and The Fitz-Gerald Group principal Keith Fitz-Gerald discuss Tesla's investor day and if now is the time for investors to get off the sidelines on 'The Claman Countdown.'

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday that working from home is "morally wrong" when others in the service industry still have to show up in person.

"There are some exceptions, but I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, Let them eat cake,' Musk told CNBC.

"It's like, really, youre going to work from home and you're going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You're going to make the people who make your food that they can't work from home? The people that fix your house they can't work from home? But, you can? Does that seem morally right?" the billionaire asked. "That's messed up."

Musk said he saw it as both a productivity issue and a moral issue.

ELON MUSK TELLS TESLA EXECUTIVES HE MUST PERSONALLY APPROVE ALL HIRING IN NEW MEMO: REPORT

Elon Musk walks in the Paddock prior to final practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome in Miami on May 6, 2023. (Clive Mason - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Musk said that workers need to get off their "moral high horse" with their "work from home bulls---."

He added that he is a big believer that employees are more productive when they are in person.

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The "laptop class," Musk noted, is living in "la-la land."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

"I'm saying like, look, put 40 hours in," Musk said. "And, frankly, it doesn't even need to be Monday through Friday. You could work Monday through Thursday. And, also, I think people should take vacations."

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles on June 13, 2019. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo / Reuters Photos)

Musk said there are probably two or three days annually that he does not put in a full day's work.

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Many companies have reversed pandemic work-from-home rules, with others operating remotely or in a hybrid setting permanently.

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Elon Musk slams working from home as 'morally wrong,' says 'laptop class' living in 'la-la land' - Fox Business

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform's direct messages feature including the introduction of encryption.

STR | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Twitter's power users are still coming to the app, but fewer are posting on it since Elon Musk's acquisition late last year, according to a survey from Pew Research Center.

"The Center's new analysis of actual behavior on the site finds that the most active users before Musk's acquisition defined as the top 20% by tweet volume have seen a noticeable posting decline in the months after," the survey's authors wrote on Wednesday. "These users' average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition."

Additionally, about six in ten U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year said they've recently taken breaks from the service, and a quarter of the group indicated they will not use Twitter a year from now, the survey said.

The new data underscore the challenges facing Twitter's incoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who will replace Musk. She'll be taking over the ailing social media service, which has lost a number of advertisers over the past few months on concerns that racist and otherwise inappropriate content has flourished since Musk's takeover.

Yaccarino, who recently resigned from her position as NBCUniversal global advertising chief, will need to repair relationships with Twitter's advertisers and get a grasp on content moderation. Musk has slashed the company's workforce by about 80% to roughly 1,500 employees, getting rid of some people that he should've kept, he acknowledged in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Musk said. "So there's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go."

The Pew survey also showed most of Twitter's content is produced by a small group of power users.

"Since Musk's acquisition, 20% of U.S. adults on the site have produced 98% of all tweets by this group," the survey said.

Upon request for comment, Twitter responded with its now customary poop emoji.

Watch: Elon Musk on Twitter's new CEO

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Twitter's top users are posting less since Musk takeover last year, Pew Survey shows - CNBC

Tech billionaire Elon Musk defended his promotion of conspiracy theories, called the work-from-home trend morally wrong and criticized the direction of tech startup OpenAI in a wide-ranging and at times combative interview Tuesday with CNBC.

The hourlong interview touched on subjects from autonomous vehicles and online free speech to how much sleep Musk gets and whether some of his tweets are antisemitic a reflection of his broad interests and influence as one of the worlds richest people.

Musk said he wouldnt stop sharing extremist views, even after a tweet hours earlier about fellow billionaire George Soros was widely condemned, including by the Israeli government.

Ill say what I want to say, and if the consequence of doing that is losing money, so be it, Musk told CNBC anchor David Faber in the interview, broadcast live from a Tesla facility in Texas.

Musks public statements, especially on Twitter, which he owns, have increasingly veered into online conspiracy theories in recent weeks.

He attacked Soros in several tweets Monday, saying that Soros wants to erode the very fabric of civilization and that he hates humanity. Musk compared Soros, who is a frequent target of anti-Jewish hatred, to Magneto, a fictional Jewish supervillain.

Some Twitter users offered a theory for Musks motivation: Hours before the attacks, a fund Soros controls reported selling its shares in Tesla, of which Musk is CEO.

The attack on Soros drew a swift and pointed denunciation from an official at Israels Foreign Affairs Ministry, David Saranga, who tweeted that Twitter was filled with AntiSemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews around the world.

Unfortunately Twitter does nothing to address this problem, Saranga wrote.

Musk alleged in other recent tweets that elites were falsifying examples of racial prejudice and that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought the 2020 election. Another tweet used a meme popular with white supremacists to try to explain the first two amendments to the Constitution.

Musk told Faber that he stood by his tweets and that he is a prosemite, not an antisemite.

I think thats true. Thats my opinion, he said of his attack on Soros.

Musk continued to insert himself into a discussion of the motives of a gunman who killed at least eight people at a mall in Texas this month. Although law enforcement officials have said the gunman was a suspected neo-Nazi sympathizer, Musk second-guessed them.

It should not be ascribed to white supremacy if its false, he said.

The interview occurred at a whirlwind time for Musk, one of the richest people in the world.

On a business level, he recently hired a new CEO for Twitter, and his company SpaceX tested the most powerful rocket ever created. Tuesday was also the day of Teslas annual shareholder meeting, where he promised to deliver the long-delayed Cybertruck.

On a geopolitical level, he met Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron. Over the weekend, he waded into Turkish national elections when he complied with a government order there to censor the tweets of opponents to President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

And on a personal level, authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands said in a court filing Monday that they are seeking documents from Musk in connection with a lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase of having helped to enable the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

All the while, Musk keeps popping up in celebrity news, with tabloid coverage of his visits to a Formula 1 race in Miami and a music festival in Cabo San Lucas on Mexicos Pacific coast.

Musk, asked about the upheaval at Twitter since he bought it for $44 billion last year, said some of his layoffs may have gone too far by cutting people he shouldnt have.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, he said. Were not quite at break-even yet, but were close. We need to do it fast. And if you do it fast, unfortunately, theres gonna be some babies thrown out with the bathwater.

Faber asked Musk about an issue the tech industry and other office-based businesses are still wrestling with: how much flexibility there should be to work remotely. He said software engineers and others who have traditionally worked from offices should continue to do so, in part because blue-collar workers cant work from home.

People who make your food that gets delivered they cant work from home. The people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? Thats messed up, he said.

You see it as a moral issue? Faber asked.

Yes. Its a productivity issue, but its also a moral issue, Musk said.

Musk said he remained upset about the direction of OpenAI, a company he helped to start as a nonprofit, open-source organization in 2015. Musk said he was instrumental in recruiting key scientists and even came up with the name.

It wouldnt exist without me, he said. OpenAI was meant to be open, as in open-source.

Now, however, OpenAI is partly for-profit, and it closely guards much of its work, a shift that began in 2019 as it tried to compete with Google and other companies for talent.

It would be as if you started a nonprofit to save the Amazon rainforest and they transformed themselves into a lumber company, he said.

The interview was unusual in part because Musk rarely grants time to large news outlets, which he frequently criticizes as biased.

Musk said he granted the interview at the recommendation of talent agent and public relations executive Ari Emanuel.

Im not doing an interview with CNBC, the organization, Im doing an interview with David Faber at Ari Emanuels recommendation, Musk tweeted. If David was at another news org, I would still do it.

CNBC is a part of NBCUniversal News Group, which also includes NBC News.

David Ingram covers tech for NBC News.

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Elon Musk defends his tweets, bashes work-from-home in CNBC interview - NBC News

Barrons senior writer Al Root discusses how Elon Musk has revitalized the space industry and weighs in on his Mars ambitions on Barrons Roundtable.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned on Tuesday that the economy is in for a challenging year ahead and said the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates as economic conditions worsen.

Musk was interviewed by CNBC's David Faber following Teslas annual meeting and asked Musk about how the Feds policy will make it a tough year for Tesla. Musk responded that it will be a tough year "for everyone, not just Tesla" and attributed it to the Feds recent rate hikes to tamp down stubbornly high inflation.

"You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly. It makes a lot of things more expensive certainly things that are bought with credit," Musk said. "But then it has downstream effects even on things that arent bought with credit."

ELON MUSK TELLS TESLA EXECUTIVES HE MUST PERSONALLY APPROVE ALL HIRING IN NEW MEMO: REPORT

Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX, warned that the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates, just as it was slow to raise rates as inflation spiked. ((AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) / AP Newsroom)

Musk explained that "if the car payments or your home mortgage payment is absorbing more of your monthly budget, then you have less money to buy other things. So actually, it affects everything, even those that arent bought on a line of credit."

"My concern with the way the Federal Reserve is making decisions is theyre just operating with too much latency," Musk continued. "Basically, the data is somewhat stale. The Federal Reserve was slow to raise interest rates, and now I think theyre going be slow to lower them."

INVESTORS ARE THE MOST PESSIMISTIC THIS YEAR AMID CREDIT CRUNCH, RECESSION FEARS

Musk said that economic conditions will be challenging "for everyone, not just Tesla" this year. ((Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the Fed raised interest rates for the 10th consecutive time and the benchmark federal funds rate is now at the highest levels in 16 years.

But the central bank signaled that may pause further rate hikes and future monetary policy moves will hinge on "incoming information."

INFLATION JUMPED 0.4% IN APRIL AS PRICES REMAIN STUBBORNLY HIGH

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has signaled the Fed may pause interest rate hikes as early as the Fed's next meeting depending on economic data. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Feds post-meeting statement noted, "In determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate to return inflation to 2% over time, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments."

The statement omitted a phrase that had been included in the prior statement announcing a rate hike, in which the central bank indicated that "some additional policy firming may be appropriate" to bring inflation to the 2% target.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a post-meeting press conference that, "A decision on a pause was not made today," but emphasized that, "Were no longer saying that we anticipate," and reiterated that the Feds future policy decisions will "be driven by incoming data, meeting to meeting."

FOX Business Megan Henney contributed to this report.

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Musk warns of economic headwinds, says Fed will be slow to lower rates - Fox Business

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Getty Images | Diego Donamaria

Elon Musk is concerned about his eight children's future careers especially if his kids have to compete with artificial intelligence for their dream jobs.

"How do we actually find fulfillment, how do we find meaning in life, if AI can do your job better than you can?" Musk wondered aloud in an interview with CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday.

Even as the world's second-richest person expressed a desire to help lead the coming AI charge his automaker Tesla is attempting to create fully self-driving cars, and he's previously discussed using Twitter to build AI tools he expressed concerns about the technology's future implications.

It's not the first time: In March, Musk signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development to ensure that the systems are ethically implemented, given the"profound risks to society and humanity."

On Tuesday, he struggled to articulate how the next generation might find value in a world where AI can do everything. "This question is a tough question to answer," Musk said.

Here are the two pieces of advice he said he'd give his own children:

In a way, Musk's top piece of advice is the same as it would have been pre-AI: Follow your passions in a way that can benefit other people.

"I would just say, you know, to sort of follow their heart in terms of what they find interesting to do, or fulfilling to do," Musk said. "And try to be as useful as possible to the rest of society."

The definition of "being useful to society" is rapidly changing. Even before ChatGPT's popularity exploded, people wondered how AI would replace human jobs.

Office and administrative roles could be at risk. So could content-creating jobs, from designers to software engineers though new opportunities could involve training and maintaining quality control for the AI systems that create such content.

For jobs that require uniquely human skills, AI may simply become a tool that makes work easier. Those could range from physically demanding roles like construction to communication-centric jobs like therapists.

"Jobs that emphasize interpersonal skills are much harder to be replaced by an AI," Dimitris Papanikloaou, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, told CNBC Make It in February.

Musk sleeps six hours per night, works seven days per week and only takes two or three vacation days annually, he said.

Apparently, that's what it takes for Musk to simultaneously run Tesla, SpaceX and for now, Twitter while also owning ventures like Neuralink and The Boring Company. On Tuesday, he questioned whether it's all worth it, especially if machines can eventually do the most tedious parts of those jobs for him.

"I've put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into building the companies," said Musk. "And then I'm like, 'Well, should I be doing this?' Because if I'm sacrificing time with friends and family but then ultimately, the AI can do all these things, does that make sense? I don't know."

That uncertainty may grow as AI becomes more and more complex. Even now, Musk sometimes adopts a "deliberate suspension of disbelief," finding a way to ignore the "dispiriting and demotivating" aspects of the technology he's helping build to get through his workdays, he said.

Not knowing what the future holds makes advice for the next generation difficult to give. The only wisdom Musk can reliably pass on, he said: "Work on things that you find interesting and fulfilling, and that contribute some good to the rest of society."

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Elon Musk on the future of work: 'How do we find meaning in life if A.I. can do your job better?' - CNBC

Ghislaine Maxwell and Elon Musk attend the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, California.

Kevin Mazur | vf14 | Wireimage | Getty Images

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Virgin Islands can serve a subpoena for Elon Musk to his electric car company Tesla, as part of the government's lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank's ties to dead sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The ruling came days after lawyers for the USVI government told Judge Jed Rakoff they had been unable to serve the Tesla CEO personally with the subpoena demanding documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan.

The Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for allegedly enabling and financially benefiting from Epstein's sex trafficking of young women. The late financier and sex criminal had been a customer of the bank from 1998 through 2013. JPMorgan denies any wrongdoing.

On April 28, the USVI issued a subpoena to Musk because of suspicion that Epstein "may have referred or attempted to refer" Musk as a client to JPMorgan, according to a court filing Monday.

That subpoena demands that Musk turn over any documents showing communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as "all Documents reflecting or regarding Epstein's involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex."

Read more of CNBC's politics coverage:

The USVI said in a court filing Monday that an investigative firm it had retained had been unable to locate Musk to serve him in person with the subpoena, as is the norm.

The filing also said that a lawyer for Musk did not reply to a request that the attorney accept the subpoena for his client.

Rakoff, in his order Wednesday, authorized the USVI to "arrange alternative service of its Subpoena to Produce Documents by serving Elon Musk via service upon Tesla Inc.'s registered agent."

Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The USVI also has issued similar subpoenas for documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be deposed on May 26 for the lawsuit and for a related suit against the bank by a woman who says Epstein sexually abused her.

Muks in a tweet Monday night had blasted the idea of that he be given a subpoena in the case.

"This is idiotic on so many levels," Musk wrote on Twitter, which he bought and took private last year.

"That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever," he wrote, referring to Epstein.

"The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd," Musk added. "JPM let Tesla down ten years ago, despite having Tesla's global commercial banking business, which we then withdrew. I have never forgiven them."

In 2018, Epstein told The New York Times he had been advising Musk after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe into Musk's comments about taking Tesla private. A Tesla spokesperson told The Times, "It is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything."

Epstein killed himself in August 2019, a month after federal authorities arrested him on an indictment charging him with child sex trafficking. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state charge of soliciting sex from an underage girl.

Before his fall from grace, Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, socialized with many rich and powerful people, among them former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Britain's Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III.

Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in late 2021 in federal court in Manhattan of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison.

Musk in July 2020 replied to a Twitter post that showed him posing for a photo next to a smiling Maxwell.

"Don't know Ghislaine at all," Musk wrote. "She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place."

The New York Times, in a 2022 article detailing that photo, reported that a Vanity Fair staff member who had stood next to both Maxwell and Musk at the party said that "the pair chatted."

"Ms. Maxwell asked Mr. Musk if there were a way to remove oneself from the internet and encouraged Mr. Musk to destroy the internet; Mr. Musk demurred," The Times reported, citing the staffer, who shared contemporaneous notes of the encounter.

"Ms. Maxwell then asked Mr. Musk why aliens hadn't yet made contact with humanity, to which Mr. Musk replied that all civilizations eventually end including Maxwell's hypothetical alien one and raised the possibility that humans are living in a simulation."

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Elon Musk subpoena in Epstein-JPMorgan lawsuit can be served to Tesla, judge rules - CNBC

Elon Musk told CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday that he doesn't care if his inflammatory tweets scare away potential Tesla buyers or Twitter advertisers.

"I'll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it," said Musk, who owns Twitter.

Musk has for years tweeted controversial items, including conspiracy theories and comments his critics have called broadly discriminatory.

His defense came after Musk caught renewed criticism for a tweet in which he likened liberal billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros to X-Men villain Magneto, a Jewish Holocaust survivor.

"He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity," Musk tweeted Monday.

Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund Management, recently cut its stake in Tesla. Soros, who is also Jewish, is a favorite target of right wing pundits and politicians and often the subject of anti-Semitic attacks. Soros and his family escaped the Nazis during World War II.

Critics said Musk's tweets about Soros fit a larger pattern of attacks on the 92-year-old investor and Democratic donor. "Musk's likening Soros to Magneto isn't casual; it's a nod to harmful antisemitic tropes of Jewish global control," tweeted Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Israel's Foreign Ministry, likewise, said Musk's tweets had "anti-Semitic overtones."

Musk on Tuesday denied he's an anti-Semite. "I'm a pro-Semite, if anything," he said when Faber asked him about the criticism. Musk has also previously tweeted and removed memes using Hitler.

Faber on Tuesday also asked Musk why he tweeted a link to someone who said a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this month might be part of "a bad psyop," or "psychological operation."

Investigators have probed whether the shooter, whom police killed, had expressed white supremacist views since he wore a "RWDS" patch, a reference to the phrase "Right Wing Death Squad," which is used by extremists. He also had Nazi tattoos, including a swastika.

"I thought this ascribing it to white supremacy was bulls---," Musk said, adding that he thinks there's no proof the shooter was a white supremacist. "We should not be ascribing things to white supremacy if they're if it's false."

Since Musk took over Twitter last fall, the social media network has experienced a sharp decline in advertising revenue as brands and companies assessed changes to the platform and some called out its outspoken new owner.

Last week, Musk hired former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino to replace him as Twitter's CEO, a move widely seen as a way to jumpstart Twitter's ad business. She started Sunday.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

CNBC's Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk: 'I'll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it' - CNBC

Elon Musks Twitter profile on April 25, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Just over a year ago on April 14, 2022 Elon Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter. With Musk now at the helm, here are four facts about how adult Twitter users in the United States are using the site.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand the on-site behaviors of U.S. adults on Twitter since Elon Musk acquired the platform. Data in this report is drawn from the American Trends Panel (ATP) Wave 119 conducted from Dec. 12 to Dec. 18, 2022. The sample is composed of panelists who indicated on the survey that they use Twitter and agreed to share a Twitter handle for research purposes. After the survey was fielded, researchers reviewed each account individually and removed any accounts that were suspended, invalid, or that belonged to institutions, products or international entities.

This final sample of 1,002 U.S. adult Twitter users with valid, active handles was weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, race, years lived in the U.S., education, region, party identification, volunteerism, voter registration, metropolitan area, frequency of internet use and religious affiliation to American Trends Panel December 2022 (Wave 119) survey respondents who indicated in that survey that they use Twitter, using the Wave 119 weight as the base weight. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points. For more details, read the Wave 119 methodology.

The findings in this report that examine users patterns of posting are based on tweets produced by respondents whose accounts were set to public during the period from Jan. 1, 2022, to April 10, 2023. All tweets posted by these public accounts during this timeframe were collected using the Twitter API, resulting in a total of 620,116 original tweets, replies, quote tweets and retweets from 639 users with public accounts who tweeted at least once during that time period. Center researchers also identified any tweets from these users that mentioned the name or Twitter handle of Elon Musk using case-insensitive regular expressions.

Musk himself has become a far more common subject of discussion on Twitter since acquiring the platform. On average, adult Twitter users in the U.S. mentioned Musk in a tweet just once between Jan. 1 and April 13, 2022, before he announced his intention to acquire the platform. Since then, however, references to Musk have become much more common on the site. These users tweeted about him an average of three times between April 14 and Oct. 26, 2022 while Musk was in the process of acquiring the platform and an average of six times in the months after the sale was finalized.

When looking at adult Twitter users individually, roughly four-in-ten have mentioned Musk in a tweet since early 2022. These mentions are especially common among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who use the platform.

As was the case before Musks takeover, tweeting activity continues to be highly concentrated among a relatively small share of the sites users. A minority of adult Twitter users in the U.S. continue to produce the bulk of the content. Since Musks acquisition, 20% of U.S. adults on the site have produced 98% of all tweets by this group.

As in the past, Democrats and Democratic leaners account for a majority 61% of these highly active tweeters.

The majority of highly active Twitter users continue to use the site following Musks takeover but are posting less frequently on average. Six-in-ten U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year say they have taken a break from the platform recently. And a quarter of these users say they are not likely to use Twitter a year from now, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

The Centers new analysis of actual behavior on the site finds that the most active users before Musks acquisition defined as the top 20% by tweet volume have seen a noticeable posting decline in the months after. These users average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition.

Despite this, eight-in-ten of the most active adult Twitter users between Jan. 1 and April 14, 2022, have remained among the most active users in the months after Musk formally acquired the site in October 2022. The same general pattern holds when narrowing the focus to the most active 10% of Twitter users before and after the sale. Around three-quarters of these users have remained among at least the top 20% of tweeters since the acquisition.

Retweets are more common among Democratic Twitter users, while replies are more common among Republicans. Since Musks acquisition of Twitter, three-quarters of tweets from all U.S. adults on the site have been either retweets (35%) or replies to other users (40%). The rest are either original tweets (15%) or quote tweets (9%). But certain groups post an especially large share of certain types of tweets.

Notably, there are partisan differences in the types of tweets users post. Retweets are the most common type of tweet from Democrats and Democratic leaners, accounting for half of all tweets from this group. By contrast, replies are the most common type of tweet by Republicans and Republican leaners, accounting for 61% of tweets from this group.

Note: For more details, read the Wave 119 methodology.

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How U.S. adults on Twitter use the site in the Elon Musk era - Pew Research Center

Image Credits: Collage by TechCrunch / Getty Images

Its no secret that Elon Musk has been deeply frustrated with OpenAI since stepping down from its board in February 2018, culminating in an open letter calling for the organization to pause work on more powerful systems.

It does seem weird that something can be a nonprofit, open source, and somehow transform itself into a for profit, closed source, Musk said in a CNBC interview Wednesday, following a Tesla shareholders meeting. This would be like, lets say you funded an organization to save the Amazon rainforest, and instead they became a lumber company, and chopped down the forest and sold it for money.

The power of his criticism hinges on the fact that Musk helped to launch the AI research organization. But exactly how much support he gave, even Musk seems unsure about.

Im still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesnt everyone do it? he tweeted in mid-March. A week later he complained on Twitter again: I donated the first $100M to OpenAI when it was a non-profit, but have no ownership or control.

The $100 million figure has been widely reported as fact. But in the same CNBC interview yesterday, Musk abruptly shrank his claim. When asked how much he had donated to OpenAI, he replied: Im not sure the exact number but its some number on the order of $50 million.

So what changed in the last eight weeks?

Following his original tweets in March, TechCrunch began an investigation into the funding behind the original OpenAI non-profit, including Musks contributions. Our analysis of documents filed with the IRS and a state regulator show that Musk could not have given the non-profit the $100 million he originally claimed.

In fact, while the source of much of OpenAIs funding remains unclear, filings contain only around $15 million of donations that can be traced definitively back to Musk.

TechCrunch did not receive a response from Musks lawyer when presented with our analysis and asked for details of his financial support.

The tax filings also reveal previously unreported details about one of the most valuable and well-known technology ventures operating today, including the level of investment by Reid Hoffman, free Teslas for early OpenAI engineers, and the sky-rocketing computing bill that may have prompted it to take a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.

The financial side of OpenAI has been murky ever since the organization was announced by AI researchers Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever in December 2015. They wrote that OpenAIs goal was to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. The non-profit would be co-chaired by Musk and Sam Altman.

The blog claimed that Altman, Musk and Brockman would donate to the new 501(c)3, along with Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Amazon, Infosys, Y Combinator partner Jessica Livingston and YC Research, another non-profit spun out of the startup accelerator. In total, these funders have committed $1 billion, they wrote. The next year, Wired duly reported OpenAI as a billion dollar effort, and that figure was subsequently widely shared.

But committed is not the same as actually donated. According to federal tax filings, at least one of the named donors, YC Research, never gave a single dollar, and the total amount donated to OpenAIs non-profit from its inception through 2021 was only $133.2 million. The vast majority of those funds arrived before the launch of OpenAIs for-profit arm in 2019, and the non-profit itself is now largely defunct. It received just $3,066 of donations in 2021.

So how much of OpenAIs $133 million did Musk donate? A good place to start is with his own 501(c)3 organization, the Musk Foundation.

In 2016, the Musk Foundation made a $10 million donation to yet another non-profit associated with Altman, called YC.org. YC.org, in turn, made a $10 million donation to OpenAI. The reason for this roundabout route, explained an OpenAI spokesperson in 2019, was a delay in establishing OpenAIs tax-exempt status with the IRS.

That $10 million donation remains the only publicly disclosed cash contribution from Musk to OpenAI. However, an audited financial statement filed by YC.org with California charity regulators in 2020 reveals that $15 million of the organizations 2016 revenue came from a single contributor. Given that YCs revenue for the whole year totaled $16.6 million, Musk is very likely to have been that contributor. YC subsequently gave OpenAI another $16 million in 2017, of which at least $5 million was likely Musks.

The only other donation that can be tied to Musk is a previously unreported gift to OpenAI in 2017 of $248,295 worth of Tesla vehicles, and a subsequent donation in 2018 for $14,105 in vehicle upgrades. An audited financial statement notes that the vehicles were provided to employees as compensation.

However, there are also ways to give money to a non-profit anonymously. Rich individuals can cloak their gifts by funneling money through so-called donor advised funds (DAFs). The Musk Foundation donated $12.4 million in 2017, and $6.3 million in 2018, to a DAF called Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund. That fund then donated $7.8 million to OpenAI between 2018 and 2020. There is no way to tell whether any of that money was Musks the Fund has many donors and tens of billions of dollars in assets but it is impossible to rule out.

Companies and individuals can donate to non-profits directly without their identities being made public. Musk likely did this with the additional $5 million gift to YC.org in 2016. Perhaps he simply topped up his OpenAI donations to $50 or $100 million the same way?

Several weeks ago, Musks representative was presented with TechCrunchs reporting but did not reply to requests for comment. The only way to put a limit on Musks contributions was to count up the gifts to OpenAI from other donors and see how much was left over.

Sam Altman, now OpenAIs CEO, made a contribution, the organizations 2016 IRS filing shows. He loaned the young organization $3.75 million to get it started and then forgave the full amount, with interest, for a total gift of $3,784,637.

Hoffman used his own foundation, Aphorism, to give $1 million to YC in 2016, which the organization seems to have passed on to OpenAI in 2017. Aphorism then followed up with a $5 million donation direct to OpenAI in 2017 and 2018.

Amazon and Microsoft donated at least $800,000 in cloud computing services, and Infosys confirmed to TechCrunch that it had made a donation. None of the companies would put a dollar amount on their contributions. There were other corporate gifts in-kind, including a $129,000 high performance computer from Nvidia, as well as software and services from over a dozen other companies.

OpenAI would not share details of contributions made by Brockman or Livingston. Likewise, there is no record of Peter Thiel providing any funds to OpenAI, nor did his VC firm reply to a request for information. However, there was a modest $100,000 donation in 2018 from Donors Trust, a DAF favored by conservatives and libertarians, among whom Thiel has been counted.In 2017, Open Philanthropy announced a $30 million donation to OpenAI, which was delivered in three $10 million gifts in 2017, 2018 and 2019, through a non-profit controlled by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Open Philanthropys CEO, Holden Karnofsky, was given a seat on OpenAIs board.

We see some risks, both from unintended consequences of AI use, and from deliberate misuse), and believe that we as a philanthropic organization, separate from academia, industry, and government may be well-placed to support work to reduce those risks, the organization wrote at the time.

As OpenAI scaled, its costs began rising fast. On top of employing super-star AI researchers with multi-million dollar salaries, OpenAIs computing bill had increased exponentially and in-kind computing donations were just a drop in the bucket. According to its tax filings, OpenAI spent $2.3 million on cloud computing in 2016, $7.9 million in 2017, and $30.6 million in 2018.

In February 2018, OpenAI switched cloud providers from Amazon to Google, signing an agreement to spend at least $63 million with the tech giant over the next two years. Musk left OpenAIs board the same month. The events may be unconnected, although Semafor reported recently that Musk thought OpenAI was slipping behind Google, and walked away after the other founders rejected his offer to run the nonprofit.

According to insiders at OpenAI contacted by Semafor, Musk stopped making donations at that point, precipitating the spin-out of a for-profit OpenAI LP that would welcome outside investors. By the summer of 2019, OpenAI had already spent its Google computing money and was looking for another deal.

In July, Microsoft invested around $1 billion in the new for-profit entity with about half the funds in the form of credits for its own Azure cloud computing service.

Musk has publicly decried OpenAIs transition to a for-profit business.

Its other big donor, Moskovitz, also seems to have soured on the effort. In a conversation on a philanthropy forum in March, he posted: My hope is we actually slowed acceleration by participating but Im quite skeptical of the view that we added to it.

Not every founding donor felt the same. Reid Hoffmans Aphorism foundation invested a previously unreported $50 million in OpenAIs for-profit venture in 2018. Aphorism justified the charitable investment by writing that the new business aimed to provide AI technology to the public through open source licensing where appropriate to benefit the public.

None of the recent versions of OpenAIs Chat-GPT chatbot have been open source.

With Musks departure, OpenAI welcomed six new board members, each of whom also became a donor, according to the organization. Neither they nor OpenAI would share how much they gave, but the next year, OpenAI received its last major public gift: $30 million from a DAF called the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. There is no record of Musk or his foundation ever donating to that DAF.

Adding up all the non-Musk contributions to OpenAI (including the Silicon Valley Community Foundation money) gives a total of $75.8 million, out of $133.2 million. That means the most Musk could have donated to OpenAI would likely have been $57.4 million a far cry from the $100 million he originally claimed, but close to the figure he mentioned Wednesday.

However, this number assumes that three founding donors (including Thiel), six newer donors, and multiple corporate supporters like Infosys, gave nothing at all.

In the bigger scheme of Musks finances, a discrepancy of $35 million, $50 million or even $85 million is little more than a rounding error. With Musk recently valuing Twitter at just $20 billion, the worlds second richest person has lost well over $100 million every day since buying the company last fall.

Correction: Sam Altman was president of Y Combinator, not a co-founder.

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Elon Musk used to say he put $100M in OpenAI, but now its $50M: Here are the receipts - TechCrunch