Category Archives: Elon Musk

Were starting to get a clearer picture of how Elon Musks takeover of Twitter has changed the platform. According to new data from Pew Research, a majority of US Twitter users have taken a break from the platform over the last year, and many of the sites most active users are tweeting less often than they used to.

Six-in-ten Americans who have used Twitter in the past 12 months say they have taken a break from the platform for a period of several weeks or more during that span, Pew writes in a report based on a survey of 10,701 Twitter users. In a separate report, Pew also studied the actual behavior of 1,002 of Twitters most active users and found a noticeable posting decline in the months after Musks acquisition. These users average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition, Pew noted.

Together, these stats suggest that engagement on Twitter has declined since Musks takeover, at least among formerly active users. Thats particularly notable because, as Pew notes, the vast majority of Twitter users are lurkers, not posters. Twenty percent of Twitter users send 98 percent of all tweets.

At the same time, it seems many of Twitters most active users havent given up on the platform entirely. According to Pew, only 25 percent of highly active users said they are not very or not at all likely to be on Twitter a year from now.

Pew didnt poll Twitter users on the reasons for their pullback from Twitter, or if Musks actions were directly responsible for the shift. It also doesnt take into account how many new users may have joined Twitter in the last year. But the new numbers offer new insight into the growing ranks of Twitter quitters who may be spending more time on alternative platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky since Musks takeover,

Unsurprisingly, Pew also found that Musk himself has become even more of a main character on Twitter over the last year. 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, the report says. 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.

The reports come as Musk has named a new CEO in former NBCU executive Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino, who is slated to start in the coming weeks, is expected to draw on her ad industry experience to try to win back advertisers, many of whom have fled following controversial policy changes by Musk. Whether she'll be able to win back the much sought-after highly active tweeters, though, is unclear. With Musk remaining as CTO and executive chairman, hes likely to continue to be Twitters most influential and controversial user for the foreseeable future.

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US adults are spending less time on Twitter since Elon Musk took over - Engadget

In 2016, Tesla (TSLA 4.41%) CEO Elon Musk first revealed plans to develop a fully autonomous self-driving robotaxi. While it's still not on the road seven years later, he just hinted it's closer than ever -- it might even be ready this year.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNBC's David Faber yesterday, Musk added a little more color to his vision for the project, and serving as a self-driving ride-hailing platform appears to be a big part of the value proposition.

The undisputed global ride-hailing leader today is Uber Technologies (UBER 1.07%), which is currently working on its own self-driving technology. But with a giant like Tesla entering the space, should Uber be worried?

Image source: Tesla.

To be clear, the robotaxi won't necessarily be a new Tesla model. Instead, Musk's goal is to have as many customer-owned Teslas serving as robotaxis as possible by having them install the company's self-driving software.

In the interview, he talked about how the average passenger car is used for just 10 to 12 hours per week, spending most of its time parked at its owner's home or place of work, which makes the value proposition incredibly inefficient. By installing autonomous software, those vehicles could spend that idle time out on the road as part of a ride-hailing network, earning money for both the owner and for Tesla.

Musk touched on the potential business model, describing a revenue split that could run 50/50 or even 70/30 in favor of the car owner. This could absolutely transform Tesla's financials, because instead of just manufacturing a vehicle and selling it with a gross profit margin of 25%, each car would potentially earn a margin of 70% (or higher) over time.

What could that translate to in dollar terms? Musk referenced the analysis of Cathie Wood and her firm Ark Investment Management, which issued some projections earlier this year suggesting autonomous ride-hailing could generate $4 trillion in revenue by 2027. It could also create $14 trillion in enterprise value in the process.

That's why the robotaxi also underpins Ark's $2,000 price target for Tesla stock in 2027, which is the highest on Wall Street. Ark predicts the autonomous platform will be responsible for 67% of the company's $6.1 trillion in enterprise value by that time -- if that were true today, it would be the single most valuable piece of technology in the world.

Tesla's autonomous driving software is widely considered to be the most advanced in the industry, with 2.7 million cars on the road specifically collecting data, which is 10 times more than its closest competitor.

But Uber has a huge advantage in its digital platform, with over 130 million monthly users, who completed 2.1 billion rides in the first quarter of 2023 alone. Since human drivers are the company's largest expense, an autonomous solution would simply represent the natural progression of its business model.

Uber has a difficult history with autonomous technology, having abandoned its in-house development project in 2020 after one of its test vehicles killed a pedestrian a couple of years earlier. However, last year, it signed a 10-year deal with a company called Motional, which is a joint venture between Korean automotive giant Hyundaiand mobility technology company Aptiv.

Motional has developed a driverless platform on top of Hyundai's Ioniq 5 electric vehicle. It has achieved SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Level 4, which means the vehicle is fully autonomous and can handle all driving and navigational tasks without human input. Motional was missing a ride-hailing ecosystem, which is what Uber brings to the table.

Together, the companies could theoretically deploy the largest autonomous ride-sharing network in the world.

Elon Musk hinted that Tesla will adopt a closed-loop ecosystem when it comes to its autonomous platform. In other words, self-driving Teslas can only operate within Tesla's ride-hailing network -- they can't be used to work for Uber, for example.

That effectively ensures the company earns income from its software in perpetuity. If new electric vehicles do completely displace sales of internal combustion vehicles and Tesla remains the most popular electric vehicle brand, this closed-loop strategy could quite literally be worth trillions of dollars.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, Uber has a major head start with users. Will everyday non-Tesla owners download another smartphone application just so they can specifically hail a Tesla? That's the biggest question. Tesla might have an abundance of supply on the road, but if users prefer to stick with Uber, it won't be very successful.

For that reason, it's too early for Uber to fear this impending threat, especially if it delivers a comparably good autonomous solution through its partnership with Motional. If investors want to hedge their bets, this emerging industry is a good-enough reason to buy both Tesla and Uber stock.

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Elon Musk Just Unveiled His Vision for Tesla's Robotaxi -- Should ... - The Motley Fool

Emily Reed lost her younger sister Jessica more than 10 years ago. For much of the last decade, she's visited Jessica's Twitter page to help keep her memory alive.

Twitter became one of the places where Emily processed her grief and reconnected with a sister she describes as almost like a twin. But Jessica's account is now gone.

Last week, owner Elon Musk announced Twitter would be purging accounts that have had no activity for several years. That decision has been met by an outcry from those who have lost, or who fear losing the thoughts and words of deceased loved ones linked to now-inactive accounts.

Reed immediately returned to Jessica's page as she had done a day or two earlier after learning of the purge. In place of Jessica's page was an "account suspended message that suggested it may be in violation Twitter rules.

Also read: Google to delete accounts that have been inactive for two years

Reed's tweet recounting her shock over the loss of the account has received tens of thousands of responses. Others shared similar experiences of pain upon learning that the account of a deceased loved one had vanished.

Having these digital footprints... is super important to me, Reed, 43, told The Associated Press.

The advent of social media has come with a new way in which people mourn, returning to the place where they connected with friends and family in the past. In addition to memories and physical traces left behind, snippets of lives are have are now being captured in the digital space.

It is something that social media platforms have wrestled with for recent years.

Twitter backed off an attempt to purge inactive accounts in 2019, years before Musk arrived, due to a similar backlash.

Other social media sites have found ways to allow people to mourn those they've lost.

Facebook and Instagram allow users to request an account be deactivated, or a memorialisation of the account. Memorialised accounts show the word Remembering next to the person's name.

In this modern age, we have these electronic reminders of people (including) little snippets of a thought they had on a particular day or pictures that they shared, said Shira Gabriel, professor of psychology at University at Buffalo. Looking through a late loved one's social media can be both a healthy way to process grief and gather as a community in remembrance, Gabriel said.

The prospect of that resource disappearing can bring about a sense of mourning again, Gabriel said. There is a real psychological cost of getting rid of this digital thumbprint that was left behind and this ability for community members to gather in one spot.

It is unknown if Musk will backtrack on the decision to purge. The billionaire CEO of Tesla has launched policies that have rattled users and advertisers alike and shown little interest in amending those policies in response.

Musk named a new CEO last week, Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal advertising executive, who will have her hands full with a platform seemingly now in a perpetual state of chaos.

Also read: Is Twitters new CEO heading toward a glass cliff?

Deleting inactive accounts can be seen as fulfilling a promise Musk made when he bought the company, particularly winnowing down junk accounts and bots, said Samuel Woolley, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media.

There are good reasons to preserve inactive accounts, and also reasons to delete them, Woolley said, but he is leery of the one-size-fits-all approach.

Advocates of purging accounts cite skewed metrics caused by inactive accounts or bogus on social media platforms. Yet on top of emotional pain for some users mourning late loved ones, deleting inactive accounts could also mean losing tweets that documented historical events, commentary and breaking news on the app over the years.

Twitter operates in many ways like a library of data, Woolley said. Just because someone hasn't been active for 30 days or a few years, doesn't mean their tweets don't still have a great amount of relevance. Musk did say the reasoning behind removing inactive accounts was to free up unused Twitter handles, or user names, and that those inactive accounts would be archived.

Also read: Elon Musk faces backlash imposing content restrictions on Twitter in Turkey

What exactly that means is not known including what inactive accounts will look like when they're archived, and whether they'll be easily accessible. Other details of the plan are also unclear, such as the number of accounts to be removed and whether the policy will be evenly enforced.

While Reed and others saw the inactive accounts of loved ones disappear last week, the account belonging to the late father of controversial internet personality Andrew Tate still appears to be on the site, for example.

On Twitter, Tate said he was fine with Musk's decision, but asked that his father's account remain active as he still (reads) his account daily.

Picking and choosing accounts for deactivation would create precisely the kind of tiered system that Musk says he wants to avoid," Woolley said.

When contacted by The Associated Press for comment, Twitter responded with an automated email. Twitter's trust and safety lead Ella Irwin also did not respond.

According to Twitter policy, the social media platform determines an account's inactivity through log-ins. Twitter says that users should log in at least every 30 days.

Twitter users are able to download an archive of their own data through the app, but not for accounts they don't possess login credentials. Reed, for example, noted that her family wasn't able to get into Jessica's account over the last 10 years. The only traces they have now are some screenshots that Reed's other sister luckily captured before the purge.

Reed talks about the importance of Jessica's Twitter and Facebook pages during her journey with grief from following her sister's difficult journey with cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disorder that Reed also has, to cherishing tweets that showed the joy and... the vibrancy that came out of her words.

Over time, the image and memories of someone who has passed away can slowly change in your mind like a fading photograph, Reed said. Having online resources, she added, can help keep a person's memory alive, in a way that just your own personal memory can't.

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Elon Musk says Twitter will purge inactive accounts. What does that mean for now-deceased users? - BusinessLine

On September 28, 2008, Elon Musk and SpaceX altered the history of the cosmos. On that fateful day, the then-struggling company sent the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket Falcon 1 into orbit.

The launch set off a domino effect, sparking the growth of other companies aiming to launch rockets and satellites more quickly and cheaply than the government agencies and contractors that had run the game since Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind.

Thats the argument made by tech journalist and author Ashlee Vance in his new book When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. Vance is intimately familiar with Elon Musk he released a biography on the infamous tech mogul in 2015.

Author Ashlee Vance traveled the globe to learn more about elusive commercial space ventures.

In fact, his in-depth Musk reporting introduced Vance to the colorful cast of characters profiled in his recent work. When the Heavens Went on Sale spends little time on SpaceX, dedicating most of its pages to Musk-inspired space companies that aim to quickly deploy rockets and satellites to low-Earth orbit: California-based Astra, Rocket Lab, and Planet Labs, along with Texas-based Firefly. With more than five years of reporting, Vance followed these teams everywhere, from New Zealand to French Guiana, stepping into secret launch locations and witnessing armed bodyguards, whisky-fueled tiffs on private planes, and even a team of male strippers in the process.

Now, two decades past SpaceXs founding, Vance recounts the trials and tribulations including plenty of expensive rocket explosions faced by these entrepreneurs in their quest to profit off our planets orbit and usher humanity deeper into the Universe.

Inverse spoke with Vance to learn more about his reporting and what he predicts for the coming decades of the rapid-fire commercial space race.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vance profiled Rocket Lab, which has ambitious plans for its reusable Electron rocket shown here.

What inspired you to write this book and specifically focus on Astra, Rocket Lab, Planet Labs, and Firefly?

I guess it was an accident in some ways. I'm not a space junkie by nature. But coming out of doing the Elon Musk biography, my favorite reporting was about the early days of SpaceX and how weird and hard it was for a team of 20-somethings to build a rocket. Right as I was finishing that book, I could see all around the world, there were more groups like this trying to give this a go.

I just got sucked in. The characters turned out to be better and better than I ever could have expected. The story seemed kind of stranger than fiction. I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a space reporter, but I couldn't resist the story.

This was always meant to be an entertaining, fun read this journey around the Earth. The focus is more on the extraordinary and unusual people than on the business itself. It's definitely not a business book.

What were your favorite moments you witnessed while embedded with these eccentric companies?

It's a very secretive world, and a lot of it is controlled by military regulations and things like that. Almost every room I was in was some kind of secret room. These companies like to remain very private.

There are two moments that really jump to mind. I spent many weeks in Kodiak, Alaska, waiting for an Astra rocket to launch. We were in this lodge, kind of trapped there with these people struggling with a rocket and with whales going by outside and bears near the house. It turned a little bit into The Shining as things went wrong.

And I am one of, I think, only two foreign reporters that ever got to go to the old Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) factory in Ukraine. I think I'm the only one that's ever been to the secret rocket testing sites in the forests of Ukraine. As a person who grew up during the Cold War, it was amazing to be at this site that was meant to spell my doom and destruction at one point.

Vance visited Astra in Kodiak, Alaska to get a glimpse of a rocket launch.

Right, private space companies are notoriously tight-lipped. So how did you get such a close look at their inner workings?

In the case of Astra, I was there the second the company started, with the first handful of employees in a room trying to test-fire their engines for the first time. I knew all 50 employees by name, and I had my own access to the factory. The CEO, Chris Kemp, to his credit, told everybody just to tell me the good or the bad. I lived with them in Alaska and in this factory.

They built this rocket, which is not dissimilar from an ICBM missile, just about 1,000 yards from a residential neighborhood in Alameda, California. I had this front-row seat to a missile coming to life in a neighborhood that nobody else knew anything about.

Entrepreneurs like Musk and Rocket Labs Peter Beck claim that their rockets and satellites can outperform government operations, but they still receive billions of dollars in federal contracts and subsidies. Would it be more accurate to call this the era of public-private cooperation?

We're in a work-in-progress stage where government and military contracts are keeping some of these companies afloat during tough times, and they're still paying for a lot of missions. There are a couple of data points that I look at, though: By 2020, we had about 2,500 active satellites in low-Earth orbit* the majority of which would have been the result of government or scientific or military funding.

SpaceX now has more satellites in space than any other entity, and its currently working on some lucrative NASA contracts.

In just the last three years, we've more than doubled that number, and almost all of those new satellites are commercial. SpaceX, with its Starlink space internet system, has more satellites than any country, and Planet Labs is second. This flip is happening very quickly, and even though some government funding helped some of these things happen, this is just the tipping point. We're shortly going to go into 100,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit, of which almost all will be commercial.

Elon Musk has said that SpaceXs Starlink helps him raise money for the massive Starship rocket do you think other businesses are using their satellite cash to fund bigger projects, too?

They almost all have to. The dirty secret of aerospace is that everybody wants to build a rocket, and its somehow seen as the sexiest part of all this, but it's the absolute worst business to be in.

All of the money is in the satellites and data communication services, and the vast majority of SpaceXs valuation from its private investors is tied up in Starlink.

Rocket Lab, the rival to SpaceX, is already making around 90 percent of a satellite, so other companies don't have to repeat all of that work every time. These other startups can now just put their special bit of equipment, their sensor, or their scientific experiments, onto the satellite.

I think this is the direction almost all the rocket companies will have to go in. It just builds on my thesis that this industry is starting to look much more like a regular business, where it matures, and everybody is not building everything from scratch every time. Now, there are regular suppliers for different parts of the whole process.

According to Vance, SpaceX is the most successful of Musks many projects.

How do you think Elon Musks Twitter era and the recent technical mishaps at Tesla affect people's hopes for SpaceX?

One of the funniest things about Elons career is that SpaceX should be the riskiest, worst-performing one of his companies. It's the hardest industry, and its taking giant swings and just shouldn't work as well as it does. But it's the clearest winner of the bunch: SpaceX is now the dominant player in space. They send up more rockets than any other country or company, and they have already put up more satellites than anyone has in history.

The company has shown its ability to run extremely well, no matter what Elon does. And, of course, Gwynne Shotwell has been the president this entire time and is this amazing right-hand woman to Elon and has run the company exceptionally well.

What do you think is the long-term goal for moguls like Jeff Bezos and Musk, who have claimed they want to form lasting human settlements in space is it to escape climate disaster on Earth?

The commercial space industry really gets to the heart of what we want to be as a species. Do we want to stay here and try to fix up the planet? Or do we want to give in to this exploratory nature do we think human intelligences goal is to spread out through the Universe? Its so fascinating to see businesses tied to these almost mythological quests.

So far, we've seen that, among the billionaires, each one has their own thing that they're after. But I think this is all coalescing around something that's a little more pragmatic: These businesses will just be built step by step. We're not sure how many of these business cases will actually check out. But what I argue in the book is that we're about to find out.

*The Union of Concerned Scientists reported around 2,666 operational satellites in April 2020, with 1,918 in low-Earth orbit.

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Elon Musk's Biographer on the "Dirty Secret of Aerospace" - Inverse

'The Evening Edit' panelists Khadeeja Safdar and David Benoit discuss their Wall Street Journal story that reveals the names of those on Jeffrey Epstein's private calendar.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is facing a subpoena from the U.S. Virgin Islands in relation to its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, who it wants to hold liable for sex trafficking acts committed by Jeffrey Epstein.

The U.S. Virgin Islands government isn't able to find Musk in order to serve him with the subpoena, and is asking a federal judge to serve it on Tesla Inc. instead.

According to a court filing, the subpoena was issued on April 28.

Lawyers for the island wrote that an investigative firm was contracted to find possible addresses for Musk and also reached out to a lawyer for Musk, but hasn't received a response.

JPMORGAN CHASE URGES 'NO' VOTE ON SHAREHOLDER PROPOSAL TO EVALUATE ALLEGED RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AT BANK

Twitter CEO Elon Musk speaks at the "Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships," marketing conference in Miami Beach, Florida, on April 18, 2023. ((Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images) / Getty Images)

U.S. Virgin Islands is suing the bank giant because it believes that JPMorgan enabled recruiters of Epstein to pay victims and was "indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise."

JEFFREY EPSTEIN-RELATED LAWSUIT REVEALS EXPLOSIVE NEW DETAILS: REPORT

Main entrance at JPMorgan Chase headquarters in New York City. (Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)

It also says that Epstein could have referred or have attempted to refer Musk to JPMorgan Chase.

READ MORE FROM FOX BUSINESS

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 02: Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022, in New York City. ((Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage) / Getty Images)

Lawyers for JPMorgan said that Epstein's victims are entitled to justice, but the litigation brought against the company is meritless.

The Asssociated Press contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk subpoenaed by US Virgin Islands in JPMorgan Chase-Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit - Fox Business

Elon Musk told Tesla employees that he wants to approve every new hire at the company personally. Its a surprising move for a company hiring about 30,000 people per year.

Electrek obtained an email that the CEO wrote to Tesla employees today.

In the email, Musk said that he wants to get a better understanding of hiring at Tesla; in order to do so, he seems to indicate that he needs to approve all new hires even contractors:

No one can join Tesla, even as a contractor, until you receive my email approval.

This is likely going to result in a mild hiring freeze, considering Tesla has been hiring about 30,000 new employees per year on average over the last three years. Its hard to imagine that Musk can approve new hires at a rate anywhere near that.

Its not clear how long the CEO plans to require his personal email approval on new hires.

Tesla implemented a brief hiring freeze last summer and a round of layoffs, but the company quickly resumed and ended last year with about 127,000 employees up 28% year over year.

The company is trying to cut costs in order to compensate for its significant price reductions across its entire lineup in 2023.

The automaker still enjoys industry-leading margins on electric vehicles, but this might change following further price drops in April.

It could really be just Elon trying to understand Teslas hiring process better, but effectively, this could result in a major slowdown in hiring.

He has used the same strategy in the past, like during the major cost-cutting effort in 2019 when he said that he and CFO Zach Kirkhorn would have to sign off on every page of spending for the entire company.

Workers are way more careful about things when they know the CEO will personally be taking a look. This looks like a similar approach with this email approval for hiring.

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Elon Musk says he wants to personally approve every new Tesla hire - Electrek

NEW YORK, May 15 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Monday rejected Elon Musk's bid to modify or end his 2018 securities fraud settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that required a Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) lawyer to approve some of his tweets in advance.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Musk's claim that the SEC exploited his consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations that violated his First Amendment free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Musk's decree resolved an SEC lawsuit accusing him of defrauding investors with an Aug. 7, 2018, tweet that he had "funding secured" to take his electric car company private.

It required advance review of tweets that might contain material information about Tesla. Musk and Tesla each also paid $20 million in civil fines, and Musk gave up his role as chairman.

In the appeal, Musk's lawyers called the pre-approval mandate a "government-imposed muzzle" that amounted to an illegal prior restraint on his speech.

But the three-judge appeals court panel said the SEC had opened just two subsequent inquiries into Musk's tweets, and those tweets "plausibly violated" the decree's terms.

The panel said the SEC's "limited, appropriate inquiries in this case have not made compliance with the consent decree 'substantially more onerous'" for Musk, as he had argued.

It also said Musk chose to allow screening of his tweets, and had no right to revisit the matter "because he has now changed his mind."

Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, said in an email: "We will seek further review and continue to bring attention to the important issue of the government constraint on speech."

The SEC declined to comment.

Monday's decision upheld an April 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan.

Liman called Musk's arguments a "bemoaning" of requirements he no longer wanted to adhere to now that Tesla had "become, in his estimation, all but invincible."

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, and runs rocket and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. He is the world's second-richest person, according to Forbes magazine.

In February, a San Francisco jury found Musk not liable for investor losses over his "funding secured" tweet.

The case is SEC v Musk, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-1291.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Elon Musk loses bid to end SEC 'muzzle' over tweets - Reuters.com

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, is no stranger to making headlines with his nonchalant attitude toward marijuana. On April 17, Musks aerospace company SpaceX recently postponed the first orbital flight of Starship, the rocket with which Musk has promised to revisit the moon and conquer Mars. Then the company announced via a tweet that it would attempt this historic flight on April 20, a day known for its significance among marijuana enthusiasts.

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It's not the first time Musk has been associated with cannabis culture he previously was seen smoking a joint on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

While Musks recent 4/20 wink to smokers was a lighthearted moment, it also highlighted a serious question: Can CEOs get away with smoking pot?

According to a Fortune article, Musk is just one of several business leaders who have been open about using cannabis. Others include British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, the late Apple Inc. Co-Founder Steve Jobs and George Zimmer, founder of Mens Wearhouse. Some, like Branson and Jobs, acknowledged indulging in recreational marijuana at some point, while others, like Zimmer, have been outspoken advocates for legalization.

The extent to which CEOs can openly acknowledge their marijuana use without suffering consequences, such as termination from their positions, is primarily determined by the culture and demographics of the companies they lead.

Company founders with a visionary aura and greater influence over their companys board of directors, like Branson and Jobs, may have more license to discuss what they consume in private, while CEOs of older companies may face more scrutiny.

As attitudes toward cannabis become more accepting, both public companies and startup are seeing more acceptance in the market. Larger tobacco companies like Phillip Morris International Inc. and Altria Group Inc. have explored or begun entering the markets in recent years. Chow420 is taking steps to promote transparency in the industry by verifying the authenticity and accuracy of cannabis and CBD products through blockchain technology. The startup is launching a chain of autonomous dispensaries across the north east, and pioneering a number of innovative industries in the cannabis and CBD space. The startup recently launched on StartEngine, which means anyone can invest for a limited time, after previously raising $1.7 million on the platform.

Story continues

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Old-school executives have made much worse decisions over two-martini lunches than anyone is making because of smoking marijuana every once in a while, said Jeffrey Cohn, global managing partner at DHR International. But its different for startup founders who have a more visionary aura and greater influence over their companies' boards of directors. As a result, many of the limited number of CEOs who have admitted to marijuana use have been company founders, rather than those who climbed the corporate ladder.

Regardless of the legal status of marijuana use, its clear that attitudes are shifting and becoming more accepting. As the legalization movement gains steam, more business leaders may feel comfortable being open about their cannabis use, as long as it doesnt negatively impact their companys image or performance.

See more on startup investing from Benzinga.

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This article Elon Musk and Other CEOs Have Openly Smoked Pot Does The Corporate World Accept it? originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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Elon Musk and Other CEOs Have Openly Smoked Pot Does The Corporate World Accept it? - Yahoo Finance

WILMINGTON, Delaware, May 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Virgin Islands has subpoenaed Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk for documents in its lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) of helping enable sexual abuses by late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The subpoena, issued on April 28, came to light on Monday in a request by the Virgin Islands to serve Musk by alternative means because it had been unable to locate and serve him.

The U.S. territory did not seek to question Musk under oath, and its effort to subpoena him does not implicate him in any wrongdoing.

According to the Monday court filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Musk, one of the richest people in the world, may have been referred to JPMorgan by Epstein. The Virgin Islands did not provide further explanation for its interest in obtaining documents from Musk.

In a tweet late on Monday, Musk said that the notion that he would listen to financial advice from Epstein was absurd.

Referring to Epstein, he said: "That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever."

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The U.S. Virgin Islands accuses JPMorgan of missing red flags about Epstein's abuse of women on Little St. James, a private island he owned there.

The bank has denied knowledge of Epstein's crimes.

In the subpoena, the Virgin Islands demanded any documents Musk has about Epsteins involvement in human trafficking and his procurement of girls or women for commercial sex.

Additionally, the subpoena sought any communications between the entrepreneur and JPMorgan about Epstein as well as between Musk and Epstein. Documents regarding fees paid by Musk to Epstein or JPMorgan also fall under the subpoena.

The extent of any relationship between Musk and Epstein was unclear. Musk and Tesla vehemently denied speculation in 2019 that Epstein was advising Musk after the Tesla chief ran into trouble with regulators for saying he had lined up the funding to take Tesla private, the New York Times reported.

It is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything, a spokeswoman for Musk told the New York Times at the time.

Musk is the second tech entrepreneur touched by the Virgin Islands litigation. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said earlier this month the territory may serve legal papers on Larry Page, although his ruling did not specify the information sought from the co-founder of Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O).

In a Tesla shareholder lawsuit, Musk testified in January that JPMorgan used to have all of Tesla's commercial banking business, but the relationship soured after the bank did not support Tesla's automotive leasing line.

That trial stemmed from Tesla shareholder claims that a 2018 tweet by Musk stating he had "funding secured" to take the carmaker private had misled investors and caused them billions of dollars in damages. The jury found Musk was not liable.

In 2021, JPMorgan sued Tesla for $162 million over the "funding secured" tweet, alleging it caused the repricing of Tesla stock warrants. Tesla countersued the bank last year, accusing it of seeking a windfall.

Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, DelawareEditing by Chris Reese

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Tom Hals is an award-winning reporter with 25 years of experience working in Asia, Europe and the United States. Since 2009 he has covered legal issues and high-stakes court battles, ranging from challenges to pandemic policies to Elon Musk's campaign to end his deal for Twitter.Contact: +6462002558

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Elon Musk documents subpoenaed in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit by US ... - Reuters

Elon Musk

US Virgin Islands is suing the bank over sex trafficking by Epstein, saying he may have referred or attempted to refer Musk as a client

Guardian staff and agency

Mon 15 May 2023 18.31 EDT

The US Virgin islands subpoenaed billionaire cars-to-rockets entrepreneur Elon Musk on Monday to obtain documents in its litigation into the role played by JPMorgan Chase bank in the activity of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when he was a customer, according to a court filing.

The Virgin Islands government is suing the bank over sex trafficking by Epstein. The Virgin Islands has been trying to serve Musk with a subpoena, the filing noted, adding that Epstein may have referred or attempted to refer Musk to JPMorgan as a client.

The Government contacted Mr. Musks counsel via email to ask if he would be authorized to accept service on Mr. Musks behalf in this matter, but did not receive a response confirming or denying his authority, the filing said.

The government accuses the bank of knowingly benefiting from Epsteins sex trafficking and other billionaires have been subpoenaed for information, too, Bloomberg reported. Epstein was ruled to have killed himself in a New York jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking-related offenses in 2019.

According to the filing in US district court in Manhattan, the Virgin Islands issued a subpoena to Musk on 28 April.

The filing added that Musk, chief executive of electric car company Tesla and space exploration company SpaceX, owner of Twitter and one of the richest people in the world, may have been referred to JPMorgan by Epstein.

It did not provide further explanation for its interest in obtaining documents from Musk. Musk, 51, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US Virgin Islands authorities accuse JPMorgan of missing red flags about Epsteins abuse of women on Little St James, a private island he owned in the Caribbean archipelago.

The bank has said it should not be held liable for a former top executives relationship with Epstein.

The subpoena sought all communications between the entrepreneur and JPMorgan regarding Epstein as well as communications between Musk and Epstein.

The subpoena also sought all documents regarding fees that Musk paid to Epstein or to JPMorgan regarding Musks accounts or relationship with JPMorgan.

It also asked Musk for all documents reflecting or regarding Epsteins involvement in human trafficking and his procurement of girls or women for commercial sex.

The details were part of a request by the Virgin Islands to serve the subpoena on Musk by alternative means because the government had not been able to serve an initial subpoena on Musk at Tesla or through an attorney who has accepted service on behalf of Musk in the past.

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Elon Musk subpoenaed over JPMorgans role in Jeffrey Epsteins activities - The Guardian