Elon Musk’s adventure in court is expected to cost him 2.5 billion dollars

Musk appeared in court to defend himself against a class action lawsuit filed against him by Twitter investors. The investors claimed that Musk tweeted false statements on the platform, which were intended to lower the stock price of the social network before completing its purchase for $44 billion.

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The Twitter deal was announced in April 2022, but the eccentric tycoon later withdrew his intention to purchase the company. Twitter’s board of directors sued Musk in July of that year for breaching the commitment, and as a result he performed another U-turn and nevertheless purchased the company at the original price agreed upon – $54.20 per share. This, despite the fact that the stock price had already fallen to only $32.52 at the time when Twitter sued Musk. According to Musk, he had to make the deal because he thought the judge in the case was biased against him.

Twitter’s shareholders claimed in the class action that during the interim period when the deal was up in the air, Musk deliberately worked to lower the price that was required to be paid for the company, before completing the deal in October 2022. The statements he spread about Twitter, they claimed, caused them losses.

“No one is above the law”

Musk’s testimony lasted about two days, and at the end of the week the jury determined that Musk was responsible for two tweets that misled investors. The first was published on May 13, 2022, in which Musk announced that the deal was “temporarily suspended” until Twitter was able to prove that the volume of fake accounts on the platform does not exceed 5% of users. In another tweet, dated May 17, 2022, Musk insisted that the deal would not move forward until he received the information.

Musk denied that his statements were false and claimed that the prosecutors failed to establish the connection between his tweets and the losses they suffered. According to Bloomberg, Musk testified that at no point did he claim that the deal was canceled. However, the New York Times reported that Musk acknowledged that “if it was a trial about whether I tweeted stupid tweets, I would say I was guilty” but did not think the tweets would cause anything “substantial.”

After some of his claims were rejected, it is estimated that the damages awarded by the jury against Musk will reach about 2.5 billion dollars. For those whose personal fortune is approaching a trillion dollars, this is of course a minor hit in the wing, but for investors this is a dramatic amount. “We believe this is the largest jury verdict in securities law in the history of the United States,” attorney Mark Mullumphy, who represented them, told CNN. “The jurors sent a strong message that no one is above the law.”

The decision even gives impetus to the lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Musk, in which he claimed that he did not report in time that on the eve of the acquisition of Twitter he had increased his holdings in it – which allowed him to collect shares at prices that were artificially low and earn $150 million. His lawyer, Alex Spiro, claimed that Musk acted properly and that the lawsuit proves that the SEC has no real cause of action against him.

“harassment campaign”

The good news for Musk is that the jury in California rejected the lawsuit surrounding two other statements he made and determined that it was not proven that Musk acted as part of a planned conspiracy to defraud investors. Either way, Musk is expected to appeal the decision. “We see today’s decision from the teacher on the way,” said his lawyers, mentioning his record as someone who wins appeals. These victories contributed to his image as someone known as “Teflon Elon”, the one to whom no failure sticks.

As mentioned, the lawsuit in California is the latest in a series of legal proceedings involving Musk. In February, the court in San Francisco canceled a lawsuit filed by xAI against OpenAI for stealing trade secrets. Musk claimed that Sam Altman’s AI giant worked to recruit former employees of xAI, who possessed knowledge about the source code of Grok, the company’s chatbot. The court ruled that it was not proven that OpenAI acted improperly, but allowed Musk to resubmit the lawsuit.

The rivalry between Musk and Altman is also the basis of a $134 billion lawsuit that Musk filed in 2024 against OpenAI and Microsoft, which owns about a third of it, and which is expected to reach the Supreme Court in April. Musk, who was one of the first investors in OpenAI, and left it in 2018 following a control struggle with Altman, is demanding a share of the profits that he claims accrued in the company following the structural change carried out by Goof not for profit to a public benefit society.

OpenAI called the claims “strange” and “part of a harassment campaign,” and clarified that Musk’s rights amount to a maximum of his original investment amount, $38 million.

In December 2025, Musk won a particularly sweet victory. The Delaware Supreme Court overturned an earlier decision by the state’s corporate court and upheld Tesla’s 2018 pay package for Musk. The value of the package already reaches 139 billion dollars. The package was initially rejected, and it was determined that it was not fair to the shareholders and that the board that approved it did not act independently of Musk. But the Supreme Court justices in Delaware believed that the ruling was unfair and left Musk without proper compensation.

And if that’s not enough, even earlier Tesla’s shareholders approved an additional salary package for Musk, according to which he may earn close to a trillion dollars in the next decade, subject to targets. It seems, therefore, that even Musk’s rare losses in the courts are far from full of his unprecedented wealth.

Elon Musk’s legal battles

● The social network Twitter (now X): a class action lawsuit against Musk for misleading investors was partially accepted, expected to pay 2.5 billion dollars
● Artificial intelligence company xAI: The company’s claim against OpenAI for stealing commercial secrets was rejected
● The artificial intelligence giant OpenAI and the software giant Microsoft: Musk is demanding 134 billion dollars from the two companies for profits they earned in OpenAI in which he invested in 2015
● Electric vehicle company Tesla: The Delaware Supreme Court approved Musk’s $139 billion pay package