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Elon Musk Archive

Archives for December 2023

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Elon Musk’s X can’t shake off a lawsuit over millions of dollars in unpaid Twitter bonuses.

In this entry into the list of lawsuits over unpaid Twitter bills, Courthouse News reports Mark Schobinger’s class action lawsuit is over unpaid 2022 annual bonuses. Schobinger, notably, is Twitter’s former senior director of compensation.

He says execs’ promises of a 50 percent payout for those who remained through Q1 of 2023 kept employees around during Elon’s “hardcoretakeover, but now the company argues its oral promise wasn’t enforceable. The judge didn’t buy that, writing that “Twitter’s contrary arguments all fail,” so the case will proceed.

The hyperloop is dead for real this timeThe hyperloop is dead for real this time
Andrew J. Hawkins
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
Pop quiz, hotshot: who do you think the sources on this story are?

It’s about Elon Musk bragging to the banks that backed his Twitter takeover that he never lost money for his investors.

Meanwhile:

One multibillion-dollar firm that specialises in distressed debt called X’s debt “uninvestable”.

My guesses are: juniors at the banks angling to make more-senior employees look dumb in order to take their jobs or employees who cautioned against the Musk debt doing a public “I told you so.”

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Tesla’s new Optimus Gen 2 robot.

The latest Tesla Bot is a little bit lighter, walks faster, and balances better with improvements throughout, including in the function of its neck, feet, and hands. But is it the “friend” Elon Musk says will cost “much less than $20,000” and allow for “a future where there is no poverty?” Probably not.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Ad sales on X are reportedly about about a half billion lower than anticipated for 2023.

Bloomberg cites unnamed sources in this report about how much ad revenue has dropped for the platform formerly known as Twitter as its CTO continues to drive advertisers away, saying it’s on track for $2.5 billion this year despite internal targets for $3 billion.

X generated a little more than $600 million in advertising revenue in each of the first three quarters of the year, and is anticipating a similar performance in the current period, according to a person familiar with the numbers. That compares to more than $1 billion per quarter in 2022.

The X head of business operations, Joe Benarroch, is quoted disputing the figures, claiming the sources “are not providing accurate and comprehensive details... We are not Twitter any longer and not measuring ourselves by old Twitter metrics — both in revenue and user metrics.”

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Is Threads signing a major free agent away from Elon Musk?

Even as big advertisers exit, sports Twitter has continued going strong. But now the official Threads account announced that sports/NBA Twitter’s newsbreaker Adrian Wojnarowski “has landed” and is doing a Q&A Friday.

If “woj bombs” are on the move, it might be about more than hashtags — Wojnarowski works at ESPN, which is still owned by Disney. Musk singled out Disney CEO Bob Iger with his “go f yourself” comments last week, then followed up with more attacks and accusations today while misspelling Iger’s name and saying “He should be fired immediately.”

David Pierce
David Pierce
Today on The Vergecast: Cybertruck details, billionaire drama, and digital gods.

Somehow, even after the Cybertruck launched, we still don’t know how many wipers it has. But we do know a lot more about it, including how to open the door! We also kinda sorta got some closure on the OpenAI drama, but as always the CEOs are still out here saying some wild stuff on stage and on the internet. Thank goodness we have a podcast where we get to loudly ask the digital gods: why?