<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to lay off around 10% of Tesla’s workforce due to his concerns about the state of the global economy, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-musk-says-tesla-needs-cut-staff-by-10-pauses-all-hiring-2022-06-03/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;on Friday citing an internal email sent to company executives, a move that could see thousands of workers at the electric car maker lose their jobs amid growing fears of a recession.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-musk-says-tesla-needs-cut-staff-by-10-pauses-all-hiring-2022-06-03/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to</a>&nbsp;Reuters, Musk sent an email on Thursday ordering a freeze on new hiring and wrote that he has a “super bad feeling” about the state of the economy.



Despite the purported email, Tesla’s LinkedIn&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/tesla-motors/jobs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">page</a>&nbsp;continues to show more than 5,000 active new openings at the company as of early Friday morning.



According to last year’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000095017022000796/tsla-20211231.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earnings report</a>, Tesla and its subsidiaries had 99,290 active employees at the end of 2021.



The markets reacted negatively to Reuters’ report with Tesla’s Nasdaq-listed shares being down 3.8% in pre-market trading early on Friday morning.



Tesla did not respond to&nbsp;Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$233.7 billion. That’s Musk’s total net worth as of Friday morning, according to&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#4b8c67493d78">real-time tracker</a>, making him the richest person in the world. The mercurial billionaire’s net worth has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/05/20/why-elon-musk-is-11-billion-poorer-friday/?sh=722d89e5380a">fluctuated significantly</a>&nbsp;over the past two months as the saga over his planned acquisition of Twitter has played out.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Musk’s reported call for job cuts at Tesla comes just days after another controversial email allegedly written by him was leaked to the public. In the email, the billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/2022/06/01/musk-says-tesla-staff-can-pretend-to-work-somewhere-else-following-leaked-emails-ending-remote-work/?sh=1e75c2a81d8b">reportedly ordered</a>&nbsp;Tesla executive staff to return to work a minimum of 40 hours a week from the company’s office, effectively barring full remote work. Musk did not confirm or deny that he wrote the email and when asked about people who want to work remotely he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1531867103854317568" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;“they should pretend to work somewhere else.” Last month, speaking at an event organized by the&nbsp;Financial Times, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyrQVhfGZc&amp;t=3506s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">praised</a>&nbsp;Tesla’s factory workers in China, saying they were willing to work long hours, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. and not even leave the factory if needed. He then took a dig at American workers, saying: “People are trying to avoid going to work at all.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-musk-says-tesla-needs-cut-staff-by-10-pauses-all-hiring-2022-06-03/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Exclusive: Elon Musk wants to cut 10% of Tesla jobs</a>&nbsp;(Reuters)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/2022/06/01/musk-says-tesla-staff-can-pretend-to-work-somewhere-else-following-leaked-emails-ending-remote-work/?sh=1e75c2a81d8b">Musk Says Tesla Staff Can ‘Pretend To Work Somewhere Else’ Following Leaked Emails Ending Remote Work</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/"></a>Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and chairman of Tesla Motors at Tesla’s headquarters in San Carlos Tuesday Oct. 24, 3008.  Silicon Valley icon Musk became a billionaire founding PayPal, but he’s out to do something even more important – help humanity reach beyon

Elon Musk Reportedly Wants To Lay Off 10% Of Tesla’s Workforce As He Frets About The Economy

Elon Musk will drop one of the riskier components behind his $44 billion bid for Twitter, a move you can read as a smart one given the single direction markets have moved over the past few weeks: down, down, down.



Musk has scrapped a plan to take out a margin loan as part of his financing for the $54.20-a-share takeover, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001494730/000110465922064655/tm2216931d1_sc13da.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a new SEC filing</a>. Originally, he intended to use a $12.5 billion such loan, but several weeks ago, he halved the figure after bringing in additional investors to the deal. Now, he says he’ll make up that $6.25 billion with additional equity. This doesn’t affect another $13 billion in standard corporate debt involved in the deal.



If Musk had taken the margin loan, he would’ve secured it with his Tesla stock, some $31.25 billion based on the loan’s terms. With Tesla stock falling, he was in the position of needing more Tesla shares to cover the loan. Margin loans are a gamble in the best of times. Even more so during financially distressing ones, such as the period&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/18/dow-falls-800-points-stock-market-selloff-continues-as-major-retailers-warn-of-rising-cost-pressures/">we currently find ourselves in</a>.



If things worsened, there was the outside possibility Musk could face a so-called margin call, when the equity securing a margin loan has deteriorated and a lender forces a loan’s repayment. Had this happened, Musk would’ve needed to sell Tesla stock all pell-mell style, depressing the share price further. (The most dramatic margin calls lead to dramatic ends, spirals that consume and end a company’s fortunes. It probably wouldn’t happen to Tesla, but it would’ve definitely made a bad situation even worse.) Musk’s lender,&nbsp;Morgan Stanley, had set a threshold of a 40% decline in Tesla stock to trigger such an event. With Tesla stock already down almost 25% in the past month, you get a sense of Musk’s circumstances: Significantly changed from when he first talked about taking over Twitter in April, that is is to say.



As with everything Musk-Twitter, there are complications to this turn of events. Foremost, where will he get the $6.5 billion in equity to replace the margin loan?



He’ll need to do one of two things. Possibly, he’ll sell more Tesla shares, not a great scenario in a down market. Doing so will further depress Tesla stock. Or he will need to find more friends to join his merry band, also not a great scenario. If it was hard to convince investors a month ago before markets wilted—and judging by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=forbes+alwaleed+abram&amp;rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS907US907&amp;oq=forbes+alwaleed+abram&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l3.4782j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the dearth</a>&nbsp;of traditional high-profile names on the deal table, it sure seems like it was difficult—it&#8217;ll be even tougher to talk people into it now. In down markets, investors run away from companies like Twitter, scantily profitable ones and forever something of a commercial disappointment. They do not tend to run toward them. Twitter shares ended Thursday at $37.16, much below Musk’s $54.20 offer.



And it’s not just that! Imagine going out on a fundraising tour right now to buy a company you’ve just spent the past few weeks maligning, accusing it of mismanaging basics like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/05/16/twitter-bots-bot-spam-musk-ceo-parag-agrawal/">estimating spam</a>. It’d be as if Musk hoped to find someone to partner with him on a fixer-upper after he stood in the street yelling about how the place has rats and bad wiring. (But don’t worry, I know a good exterminator. This house will be great after I’m done with it,&nbsp;he will presumably need to tell any new co-investors. Justifiably, they may then look at him sorta funny and wonder if they should quickly get back in their cars.)



Plus, the other matter: Hasn’t Musk said the whole thing’s on hold over those spam numbers? In a sense, you can look at his decision about the margin loan as a sign it’s very much not on hold, and Musk expects to follow through. Why drop the margin loan and make the SEC filing if he didn’t? Looks like he might buy the place after all—even if it does have pests.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/"></a>By Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk visits construction site of the Tesla Giga Factory

Elon Musk Drops Margin Loan From Twitter Bid, Making It A Little Less Risky

Tesla shares are down 15% since last Friday, making it a bad week for the world’s richest person.



Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk lost $15.7 billion of his net worth on Wednesday, as shares of his electric vehicle maker fell by 8%. The world’s richest person (worth an estimated $224.5 billion) is now $31.4 billion poorer than he was last Friday, according to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates, as Tesla’s market capitalization has cratered by 15% this week –far more than the 6% drop in the tech-heavy Nasdaq.



According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, “Shanghai factory issues due to the zero Covid policy in China have been a major overhang on the stock in an already jittery tape”—referring to the drop in tech stocks, which Ives describes as a “massive risk off with Tesla front and center.” With inflation surging and interest rates rising, investors’ appetite for assets considered to be relatively speculative is waning.



Speaking at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/87e5eff2-ff1a-4d46-93e0-5b9f889d00df?accessToken=zwAAAYC0oJPYkdOH5e_y_xpNRtOT4FufiJ0A3w.MEUCIFcpLCsKR2ow07gCP96vRF-Cj7hhId9IWTnF36bxSymVAiEAnEt372gBHy6OHmwtF4SpnYGHw3SY05sPw5-CrQdM2Es&amp;sharetype=gift?token=dcba43c8-9800-441d-875b-891e12a76dc5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit</a>&nbsp;Tuesday, Musk did his best to alleviate investors’ concerns, citing encouraging conversations he’s had with the Chinese government in recent days about the country’s latest round of lockdowns, though he did hint at the possibility of restricting new Tesla orders in the short-term.



“We’re actually probably going to limit that — just stop taking orders for anything beyond a certain period of time,” Musk said.



That must have been discouraging to hear for Tesla investors already concerned about the distraction posed by Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover. At the FT summit Tuesday, the Tesla chief insisted that he is “confident we will be able to sell all the cars we can make.” But according to Wedbush’s Ives, “Musk distraction issues remain at play as an overhang on the stock.” By distraction, Ives means the ongoing process of purchasing Twitter.



While the Tesla CEO announced he has raised $7.1 billion from a group of A-List investors last Thursday to help fund his Twitter acquisition, he still hasn’t explained where the remainder of the $27.3 billion equity commitment he made to Twitter’s board will come from. And the list of potential distractions for Musk, who already runs two companies, keeps getting longer.



According to an investor pitch deck leaked to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/elon-musk-twitter-pitch-deck.html?msclkid=258e7fe9d15f11eca815c10fac2bb1cc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times&nbsp;</a>last Friday, Musk’s Twitter turnaround plans may be even more ambitious than Tesla investors imagined: he reportedly hopes to quadruple users and quintuple revenue by 2028, while cutting Twitter’s reliance on its main revenue source (advertising) in half. That sounds like a lot of work for Musk, who is expected to serve as Twitter’s interim CEO after the deal closes, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/05/elon-musk-expected-to-serve-as-temporary-twitter-ceo-after-deal-closes.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report by CNBC</a>. Musk has also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/05/03/musk-reportedly-plans-to-take-twitter-public-a-few-years-after-acquisition/?msclkid=8290748cd16411ecb1d43e7c781e4ff7&amp;sh=3c4239db92b6">reportedly said</a>&nbsp;that he plans to take Twitter public again in as few as three years, hinting at a time consuming IPO process lingering down the road.



And that’s assuming the deal closes promptly. Twitter short-seller Hindenburg Research is betting that won’t be the case, saying in a&nbsp;<a href="https://hindenburgresearch.com/twitter/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">note released Monday</a>&nbsp;that it sees “a significant risk that the deal gets repriced lower” due to the declining values of tech companies since Musk made his initial offer. In other words, Musk may have some bargaining left to do with Twitter’s board.



Musk could always just walk away from the deal, which keeps on getting more expensive. His stake in Tesla, worth $167 billion today, was worth $235.1 billion on April 13, the day before he announced his Twitter takeover–meaning Musk was more than $68 billion richer before he made his plans for the social media company public. For now, Musk remains the world’s richest person by a long shot, worth $78.3 billion more than runner-up Bernard Arnault of French luxury empire LVMH. But at some point, the Twitter deal’s $1 billion breakup fee may start to look like a bargain.



By Matt Durot, Forbes Staff

Tesla Officially Opens Gruenheide Gigafactory

Why Elon Musk Is $30 Billion Poorer This Week

Newly valued at $2 billion, the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/">AI 50</a> debutant originated as a chatbot for teenagers. Now, it has aspirations—and $100 million in fresh dry powder—to be the GitHub of machine learning.



When Hugging Face first announced itself to the world five years ago, it came in the form of an iPhone chatbot app for bored teenagers. It shared selfies of its computer-generated face, cracked jokes and gossiped about its crush on Siri. It hardly made any money.



The viral moment came in 2018—not among teens, but developers. The founders of Hugging Face had begun to share bits of the app’s underlying code online for free. Almost immediately, researchers from some of the biggest tech names in the business, including Google and Microsoft, began using it for AI applications. Today, the chatbot has long since disappeared from the App Store, but Hugging Face has become the central depot for ready-to-use machine-learning models, the starting point from which more than 10,000 organizations have created AI-powered tools for their businesses.



Hugging Face announced Monday, in conjunction with its debut appearance on&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50">AI 50</a>&nbsp;list, that it raised a $100 million round of venture financing, valuing the company at $2 billion. Top-tier venture capital firms Coatue and Sequoia won slots as new backers in the hotly contested Series C, joining A.Capital Ventures,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/07/01/lee-fixel-raises-1-billion-fund-addition/">Addition</a>&nbsp;Capital and lead investor Lux Capital as major stakeholders in the Brooklyn-based startup.



“Machine learning is becoming the new way to build technology, replacing software,” says Clément Delangue, cofounder and CEO of Hugging Face, which is named after the emoji that looks like a smiling face with jazz hands. “The old school of building technology was writing a million lines of code. Machine learning is starting to do that, but much better and much faster.”



Speaking from his home in Miami, where he moved during the pandemic (weather, not web3, he explains), Delangue, 33, says he believes that what GitHub is for software, Hugging Face has become for machine learning. That’s a confident comparison, considering the widespread popularity of GitHub, which is used by more than 70 million developers to share and collaborate on code and was last recorded making $300 million in revenue at the time of its $7.5 billion sale to Microsoft in 2018. Hugging Face, by contrast, generated less than $10 million last year, according to three people familiar with its finances. Delangue declines to comment on the number, but he and investors think that machine learning is already becoming the single most important technology of the 2020s, and that Hugging Face can eventually make billions in revenue with its own army of AI-minded developers.



“The companies you would assume are competitors on first blush—whether it’s Google or Amazon or Facebook—almost all of them are proponents,” says Lux Capital’s Brandon Reeves, who first invested in Hugging Face in 2019. “It really feels like this Switzerland-like piece of real estate in the ecosystem.”



“I don’t really see a world where machine learning becomes the default way to build technology and where Hugging Face is the No. 1 platform for this, and we don’t manage to generate several billion dollars in revenue.”Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue



Growing up in La Bassée, a small town of 6,000 in the north of France, Delangue recalls an idle childhood until he got his first computer at age 12. By 17, he’d become one of the top French merchants on eBay, selling ATVs and dirt bikes he imported from China and stockpiled in his father’s garden equipment shop. That prowess impressed eBay, which offered him an internship once he began college at ESCP Business School in Paris. Representing the company at an e-commerce trade show, Delangue was accosted by another attendee who trashed eBay’s recent acquisition of a barcode-scanning app—barcodes, the man said, would soon be obsolete because of advances in AI.



The man turned out to be a cofounder of Moodstocks, a startup making image-recognition software using machine learning. “With a very small team, they were managing to do stuff on par with what Google was doing with 100 times more people,” he says (years later, the company was acquired by Google). Impressed by the nimbleness of startups, Delangue never looked back. He declined eBay’s offer to extend his internship so that he could spend his free time at Moodstocks. After graduating in 2012, he turned down a job from Google to run his own startup. Delangue’s idea for a collaborative note-taking app didn’t go far, but in the tight-knit European startup scene he met Julien Chaumond, a fellow entrepreneur building a collaborative ebook reader. The pair riffed on their mutual interest in open technology and talked about starting a company together.



That time came in 2016, after both their companies had ground to a halt. A third cofounder was recruited in Thomas Wolf, a college friend of Chaumond’s who had gone on to receive a Ph.D. in physics and written research papers on machine learning. For the business idea, they settled on “open-domain conversational AI”—in other words, a chatbot that could understand any kind of conversation topic—because they felt it was the most difficult problem in technology they had the expertise to tackle at the time, Delangue says. “There’s this dream we all have to speak with an AI about everything, like you see in sci-fi.”



Hugging Face began as a personalized, Tamagotchi-like friend powered by a form of AI known as natural language processing (NLP). To train the chatbot’s natural language capabilities, the team also built an underlying library to house various machine-learning models—for example, one to detect the emotions behind a text message and another to be able to generate a coherent response—and the many datasets for understanding different kinds of conversational topics, like sports or classroom gossip. Harking back to the founders’ values for open collaboration, they released free pieces of the library as an open-source project on GitHub. The company participated in a bot-specific accelerator program run by the New York-based startup studio Betaworks and raised seed funding from venture capitalists as well as NBA star Kevin Durant. But two years in, their chatbot hadn’t made much money and was losing its hold on the attention spans of its young users.



Around the same time, researchers at Google and OpenAI announced the development of “transformers,” a new type of NLP model that demolished the reading comprehension abilities of both humans and the best AI incumbent at the time. By 2019, Google was powering its search results using this model. Hugging Face’s open-source library appeared at the perfect time for organizations that wanted to harness these NLP breakthroughs but didn’t have the same machinery as Google to build them from scratch. It became a near-instant hit as the machine-learning community converged around it as the central base for deploying transformer models. “We released things without thinking too much about it and the community blew up, as a surprise even to us,” Delangue says.



Reeves, the Lux investor, first met Delangue at a coffee shop in downtown San Francisco on a Friday near the end of 2019. Scared to miss out on a chance to invest, he offered a term sheet the following Monday at an $80 million valuation. “For 90% of the companies I’ve invested in, I’ve known them for many weeks or months or years,” he says. “I don’t think any have come over a weekend.” Since Delangue accepted Lux’s check, usage has continued to skyrocket. The developer community has built more than 100,000 machine learning models on Hugging Face, enabling others in turn to use those pretrained models for their own AI projects instead of having to build models from scratch. On GitHub, Hugging Face has accumulated “stars”—a vanity metric measuring the popularity of an open-source project—at a faster pace than the projects behind&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/06/24/confluent-shares-jump-25-in-ipo-making-co-founders-new-cloud-computing-billionaires/">Confluent</a>&nbsp;(annual revenue of $388 million),&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/05/26/accidental-billionaires-databricks-ceo-ali-ghodsi-seven-berkeley-academics/">Databricks</a>&nbsp;(more than $800 million) and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/10/19/mongodbs-ipo-gives-new-york-tech-a-much-needed-win-as-shares-jump-25/">MongoDB</a>&nbsp;($874 million).



Although funding rounds for companies with similar stature were plentiful in 2021, the growth-stage venture capital market has since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaszkutak/2022/03/23/record-setting-venture-capital-market-shows-signs-of-a-slowdown/">slowed</a>&nbsp;to a near halt. Hugging Face’s latest financing then indicates a more rarified vote of investor confidence, but some in the data startup ecosystem have privately expressed curiosity about how Delangue can grow Hugging Face’s revenue enough to validate its hefty valuation. Delangue thinks that if enough free users get hooked on Hugging Face, the money will follow in time from some of the companies that employ the users. “Given how valuable machine learning is and how mainstream it’s becoming, usage is deferred revenue,” Delangue says. “I don’t really see a world where machine learning becomes the default way to build technology and where Hugging Face is the No. 1 platform for this, and we don’t manage to generate several billion dollars in revenue.”



Hugging Face only started to offer paid features last year and counts more than 1,000 companies as customers, according to Delangue, including Intel and his former stomping ground eBay. Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Roche pay for enterprise-grade security features, while Bloomberg is paying to run machine learning for its real-time terminal through Hugging Face instead of having to build out its own infrastructure. Microsoft is not a customer, but prominently uses Hugging Face as the basis to train its Bing search engine to better understand natural language queries.



“They prioritized adoption over monetization, which I think was correct,” says Sequoia partner Pat Grady, one of the new investors. “They saw that transformer-based models working their way outside of NLP and saw a chance to be the GitHub not just for NLP, but for every domain of machine learning.” Indeed, over the course of the last year, Hugging Face has started to become a hub for machine learning models for a variety of uses, such as computer vision to train image recognition in self-driving cars and recommender systems to help pharmaceutical companies predict the effectiveness of new drug therapies.



If his assumptions of machine learning supremacy are wrong, Delangue says Hugging Face is close to breakeven and has all $40 million from its previous fundraise still in the bank to reorient. “One of my personal learnings as an entrepreneur is to not think too much strategically with a big business plan of ten years, but more to experiment and follow the validation of the community and what they’re telling you,” he says. If the vision pans out, Reeves thinks the prize could be a $50 billion or $100 billion market capitalization on the stock market. It’s no wonder that Delangue says he’s turned down multiple “meaningful acquisition offers” and won’t sell his business, like GitHub did to Microsoft.



“We want to be the first company to go public with an emoji, rather than a three-letter ticker,” he says with an emoji-like smile. “We have to start doing some lobbying to the Nasdaq to make sure it can happen.”



By Kenrick Cai, Forbes Staff

Screenshot 2022-05-10 at 10.02.49

The $2 Billion Emoji: Hugging Face Wants To Be Launchpad For A Machine Learning Revolution

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Elon Musk is looking for additional equity financing for his planned $44 billion purchase of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/twitter/?sh=2f10336d22a3">Twitter</a>, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;Monday, which could allow the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">billionaire</a>&nbsp;to reduce the amount of his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news/musk-offloads-4-billion-in-tesla-shares-after-twitter-deal/75805/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">own money</a>&nbsp;bound up in the acquisition without taking out more loans.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla/">Tesla</a>&nbsp;CEO has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">approached</a>&nbsp;investment firms including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/apollo-global-management/?sh=5a842bd17358">Apollo Global Management</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/ares-management/">Ares Management</a>, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.



Musk is reportedly communicating with hedge funds, private equity companies and wealthy individuals about the possibility of obtaining equity financing.



Musk has offered to pay for Twitter through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922048128/tm2213229d1_sc13da.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$21 billion</a>&nbsp;in equity financing, in addition to a $12.5 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-twtr/">margin loan</a>&nbsp;against part of his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/04/26/why-elon-musk-is-already-26-billion-poorer-because-hes-buying-twitter/">21% stake</a>&nbsp;in Tesla and $13 billion in loans secured against Twitter assets.



Some banks that offered to support the acquisition with loans secured against Twitter have hesitated to provide additional debt financing,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>&nbsp;reported, noting that banks think Twitter did not generate sufficient cash flow to justify more loans.



However, Reuters said Musk is still deliberating on whether to enlist equity partners to help shoulder his own $21 billion share of funding for the Twitter acquisition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Musk has also contacted major Twitter shareholders—including founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dorsey/?sh=4d4b5b992372">Jack Dorsey</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/fidelity-investments/?sh=234e8055370a">Fidelity</a>—about the prospect of holding onto their stakes in the company’s new structure, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Musk has previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/the-twitter-investors-musk-hopes-to-keep-may-not-want-to-stay" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suggested</a>&nbsp;that he wants to retain as many existing Twitter shareholders as possible following the planned acquisition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Musk disclosed April 4 he had acquired a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/04/04/elon-musk-acquires-92-stake-in-twitter/">9.2%</a>&nbsp;stake in Twitter, and later made his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/masonbissada/2022/04/26/musks-twitter-purchase-includes-1-billion-fee-if-deal-falls-through/?sh=7872cf3eb15a">“best and final offer”</a>&nbsp;to purchase the entire company for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/25/twitter-elon-musk-takeover-bid-deal-43-billion-54-20/?sh=191965d8b680">$54.20 per share</a>&nbsp;The board first adopted a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-moves-to-block-elon-musk-from-increasing-stake-11650040204?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“poison pill”</a>&nbsp;defense to deter a hostile takeover, but several days after Musk announced he had secured&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/21/elon-musk-has-secured-465-billion-in-financing-for-twitter-bid-considers-tender-offer/?sh=2a43ef2316a4">$46.5 billion</a>&nbsp;in financing, the board accepted his offer. Despite setting a lofty goal of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/technology/twitter-earnings-4q-2021.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">doubling revenue</a>&nbsp;from 2021 to 2023, Twitter’s growth has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/27/twitters-first-quarter-earnings-sojust-how-bad-are-they/">lagged</a>&nbsp;expectations. In the&nbsp;<a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/Final-Q1%E2%80%9922-earnings-release.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first quarter</a>&nbsp;of 2022, Twitter’s revenue grew by 16% year-over-year to $1.2 billion. The company’s net income grew 655% year-over-year to $513 million, though this growth was due mostly to a gain of $970 million from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2021/10/06/twitter-is-selling-its-mobile-ad-network-mopub-to-applovin-for-105-billion/">sale</a>&nbsp;of the mobile ad network MoPub, and the company reported an operating loss of $128 million in the first quarter. Musk said he intends to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/musk-told-banks-he-will-rein-twitter-pay-make-money-tweets-sources-2022-04-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">boost</a>&nbsp;Twitter’s profitability by offering new opportunities to monetize tweets and that he intends to cut costs by reducing Twitter board member salaries from roughly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/02/musk-criticizes-twitters-executive-compensation-heres-how-it-compares-to-rivals-meta-snap-and-alphabet/">$290,000</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1516056299376623626?s=20&amp;t=gPll1s9GF3Pt_5KAO4G7iw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$0</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">$253.6 billion.</a>&nbsp;That’s how much Musk is worth, making him the world’s richest person, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ estimates. His stakes in Tesla and SpaceX account for most of his fortune.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/04/29/how-musk-already-owns-twitter-the-8-top-tweets-in-the-past-week/">“How Musk Already Owns Twitter: The 8 Top Tweets In The Past Week”</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/"></a>Zachary Snowdon Smith, Forbes Staff

Economic Photo Illustrations

Musk Reportedly Seeks More Financing For Twitter Acquisition

At the recent Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa in Botswana, Patrice Motsepe called for more urgent investments in young people.



President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and South African billionaire, Patrice Motsepe, called for the greater promotion of African football, also urging investments in young startups, at the recent Forbes Under 30 Summit Africa, held in Botswana from April 24-28.



In a keynote conversation on the second day of the summit, Motsepe took to the stage at the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub in the country’s capital Gaborone, addressing as many as 600 entrepreneurs attending from across Africa and the world. The summit was also attended by Botswana’s President, Mokgweetsi Masisi.



“The young people seated here, in front of me, reflect some of the brightest in the world,” said Motsepe, adding that it is “an exceptional time” for Africa.



“We have got to invest in infrastructure and finance and encourage more young people start startups and keep starting again.”



Starting businesses in Africa is not the same as in the rest of the world, he pointed out. The situation in Africa is marginally different and at this point of entrepreneurship in Africa, the continent should not feel obligated to compete with the rest of the world. Motsepe stated that what the continent needs currently, is more real contribution than anything else.



“There are 300 million young people between the ages 15-25 on the African continent. We have to connect with them. We have to be where they are. We have to hear what they say. The future for Africa is exciting and beautiful.”



According to the African Development Bank, 22% of Africa’s working-age population are starting businesses. The report further stated that this is the highest entrepreneurship rate in the world.



“The best ideas are not sitting in some corporate office,” Motsepe told the delegates in the audience.



“The hardest part of any venture is when you start. Because when you succeed, success perpetuates itself. There’s money available for opportunities, but they have to be profitable and sustainable. If it’s not profitable, try something else.”

FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final Draw

‘It’s Africa’s Time… And It’s An Exceptional Time’: Billionaire Patrice Motsepe

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Elon Musk sold more than 4.4 million shares of electric car company Tesla earlier this week for just under $4 billion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings released Thursday evening, shortly after the billionaire Tesla CEO agreed to buy Twitter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The sales took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, at prices ranging between about $872 and $999 per share,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/000089924322015923/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/000089924322015924/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">regulatory</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/000089924322015949/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filings</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/000089924322015942/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>.



Musk still owns more than 168 million shares of Tesla.



Shortly after the sales were disclosed, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519850299757846530" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$246.2 billion. That’s Musk’s net worth, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ estimates. His stakes in Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX account for most of his wealth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Twitter’s board of directors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/25/twitter-elon-musk-takeover-bid-deal-43-billion-54-20/?sh=7dd98932b680">agreed Monday</a>&nbsp;to sell the company to Musk, wrapping up a dramatic period that began with Musk buying up 9.2% of Twitter and later making an unsolicited bid to purchase the entire social media company at a valuation of $44 billion. The deal—which still needs to be approved by Twitter’s shareholders—<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/musk-s-21-billion-mystery-where-will-he-get-cash-for-twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">will require Musk</a>&nbsp;to come up with some cash: The billionaire offered to pay for Twitter using $21 billion in equity financing, in addition to more than $20 billion in loans.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Shares of Tesla have fallen more than 12% this week, closing at $877.51 Thursday. Some <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/04/26/why-elon-musk-is-already-26-billion-poorer-because-hes-buying-twitter/?sh=6411f8ea7977">analysts think</a> the sliding share prices are tied to Musk’s commitment to buying Twitter, which could distract the Tesla CEO and force him to sell part of his stake in the company.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/"></a>By Joe Walsh, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk Sells About $4 Billion In Tesla Shares Ahead Of Planned Twitter Purchase

Phewww. That was fast!



A little over 11 days after Elon Musk proposed paying $54 a share for Twitter, the company’s board&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/25/twitter-elon-musk-takeover-bid-deal-43-billion-54-20/">approved the transaction</a>&nbsp;on Monday, a surprise reversal. Twitter initially seemed opposed to the idea—it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/04/15/twitter-board-adopts-poison-pill-to-fend-off-elon-musks-takeover-bid/">adopted</a>&nbsp;a poison pill, a defense against an unsolicited bid like Musk’s—but warmed up to it last weekend after Musk detailed how he could pay for it. Answer: A lot of debt (about $25 billion), some equity (roughly $21 billion), all of it wrapped in Musk’s Tesla shares. (He has lots of those, around $230 billion worth of them.) It adds up to a $44 billion price tag on Twitter, a 38% premium over where the stock traded when Musk first disclosed his shareholding.



So that’s it—Elon won? Can we expect to see a spaceship in employee parking starting any day? Truthfully, we’re a few orbits around the sun from that, but Musk is definitely on course to getting what he says he wants.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-musk-s-next-steps">What Are Musk’s Next Steps?</h3>



The agreement between Twitter’s board and Musk doesn’t seem to include a “go-shop period.” Some buyout deals have these provisions, a time in which the board welcomes any competing bids. (It’s like when the auctioneer with the honeyed voice starts with, “Going once, going…”) Go-shops vary in length, their terms dictated by what buyer and seller agree to. (Generally, about a month to six weeks.) Adding a go-shop is seen as favorable for investors, the board doing its best to get them the highest price. But go-shops aren’t required by law in Delaware, where Twitter is incorporated, so it’s not totally strange for Twitter not to do one. (Skipping it will add to the feeling on Wall Street that even with JPMorgan’s and Goldman Sachs’ help, Twitter found little interest when it shopped itself around over the last few weeks, trying to avoid Musk.)



Musk will next make a $54.20 tender offer to raise his shareholding in Twitter to at least 50% or higher. A tender offer is where he asks shareholders to sell him their shares. He owns 9.2%, some 73.5 million shares. To get over 50%, he needs another 319.5 million shares, which will cost $17.2 billion. Easy-peasy. He has $46 billion in financing lined up.



As the board deliberated last weekend, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjL44qE37D3AhUEhYkEHRnMABUQFnoECBMQAQ&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ftwitter-re-examines-elon-musks-bid-may-be-more-receptive-to-a-deal-11650822932%3Fmod%3Dbusiness_minor_pos7&amp;usg=AOvVaw1cn50CEzdyOCsYbH4fWzK9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;spent the weekend on the phone with big shareholders, wooing them. From there, it doesn’t require any rocket science: Musk or some member(s) of Team Musk have undoubtedly added up the yeses from last weekend and knows Musk can cross over to majority control. There is the fairly unlikely scenario of some sudden shareholder revolt, stopping him from passing 50%. Again, pretty unlikely. The board has given its stamp of approval, and the deal has received a thumbs-up from many of the analysts following Twitter.



The tender offer will stay open for 20 business days. “And then any shareholder who didn’t tender into his offer will get cleaned up by the company,” says Brian Quinn, a corporate law professor at Boston College. “The company cuts you a check for $54.20 for every share you still own.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-could-stop-musk">What Could Stop Musk?</h3>



Other than some unforeseen act of god, very little. U.S. regulators don’t seem likely to oppose it over anti-trust concerns, since Twitter is not combining with, say, Snap or something.



What we can’t account for or really predict is some act of Elon. In anything Musk-related, there is a small but non-zero chance of the once-in-a-lifetime unexpected thing happening right now, immediately at this point in our lifetimes. The man truly redefines convention and predictability. One minute, he’s on Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517707521343082496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">making penis jokes involving Bill Gates</a>. The next, he’s buying Twitter, having won approval from a board of 11 highly educated and well-compensated directors, including Twitter’s cofounder and (twice) former CEO, Jack Dorsey.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-musk-s-plans-for-twitter-and-twitter-inc">What are Musk’s Plans for Twitter—and Twitter Inc.?</h3>



The board expects the deal to close this year. For now, CEO Parag Agrawal is staying to see that process finish. After that, it won’t be a surprise to see him go, perhaps less than a year after taking over the job from Dorsey last November. Musk has been none too quiet about his criticism for Agrawal and current-state Twitter. If he wants to fire Agrawal, it will trigger a $38.7 million severance package, though it probably won’t come to that. More broadly, the company reportedly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041753/twitter-ceo-elon-musk-no-layoffs-planned" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told employees</a>&nbsp;there won’t be any layoffs “at this time” during an all-hands meeting on Monday.



Coming up, we get see to if the spaceship executive can push Twitter into something more resembling warp speed. (And if he even really wants to.) The company had grown more ambitious in the past couple years after an earlier tangle with another initially unwelcome investor. But Wall Street had come to have increasing doubts about whether Twitter could hit lofty goals Dorsey helped set before he left. That includes revenue growing by 50% from 2021 to $7.5 billion in 2023, a bold projection that won’t be helped by (1) a general slouch in the ad market right now over consumer-spending fears, (2)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/02/02/meta-stock-drops-20-after-fourth-quarter-profit-dropped-more-than-expected/?sh=31d5113d743c">continued fallout</a>&nbsp;from a change to Apple software that has made mobile ads less valuable and (3) the inherent distraction caused by a hostile takeover, even one concluding as quickly as this one. (This really did move swiftly. For comparison, the Oracle-PeopleSoft saga stretched over 18 months—18!—to get to the same point Musk and Twitter reached in less than three weeks.)



Musk has variously said he’d like the platform to better embrace free speech principles, reduce ads, open up its algorithm, add an editing tool, increase user verification and tamp down on spam bots. He also at one point used a TED Talk interview to suggest he didn’t really care about the business part of Twitter at all. There is, of course, the entire other part of Twitter, the cultural cache it emanates—the part that for 16 years has made Twitter a draw for presidents and celebrities alike and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj-gbbl47D3AhVLkokEHVgKAN0QvOMEKAB6BAgDEAE&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-will-not-return-to-twitter-even-if-elon-musk-purchases-platform-will-begin-using-his-truth-social&amp;usg=AOvVaw2y3_tRqvPU0AC5ekg1oFPU" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a unhealable sore point</a>&nbsp;for one celebrity-turned-president. This culture part has always seemed in great disproportion to the business part, and such a situation is a blinking-neon invitation to someone like Musk, who will think he can finally fix what Ev Williams, Dick Costolo and Jack Dorsey (twice) could not, since, hey, it can’t be harder than rocketing men into outer space on a semi-regular basis.



Here’s Musk sounding very Musk-like in a press release announcing the deal, talking about the future and why he did the thing in the first place:



“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,&#8221; said Mr. Musk. “Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.&#8221;



One thing’s for certain. These alterations will take Musk much more time (and patience) than it did to buy the site in the first place.



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/"></a>Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk And Twitter Logo Illustration

Elon Musk’s $44 Billion Twitter Deal: What Actually Happens Next?

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided not to join the board of Twitter, the company’s CEO Parag Agrawal&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;late on Sunday night, in a move that comes just a week after the billionaire disclosed he had acquired a 9% stake in the social media giant.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Making the announcement on Twitter, Agrawal wrote that Musk formally turned down the company’s offer to join the board on April 9.



The announcement did not clarify why Musk had turned down the spot on the company’s board.



Agrawal said he believed that this was for the best but the company will always remain open to inputs from Musk who is the company’s biggest shareholder.



Elaborating the offer to have Musk on the board, Agrawal noted that Twitter wanted to have Musk serve the fiduciary role where, like other board members, he would have been expected to “act in the best interests of our company and our shareholders.”



The Twitter CEO also noted that the board seat offer was also contingent to a background check.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Last Monday, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/04/04/elon-musk-acquires-92-stake-in-twitter/?sh=20c18a4ce2e0">disclosed</a>&nbsp;that he had acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter worth around $3 billion. A few days later, Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/04/07/owning-less-doing-more-elon-musk-updates-paperwork-on-twitter-purchase-as-employees-reportedly-raise-concerns/?sh=78fb8c5b2351">clarified</a>&nbsp;that the billionaire had actually acquired 9.1% of the company and the earlier number was a mistake. Following his acquisition Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder, with a holding that is nearly four times the size of founder Jack Dorsey’s 2.25% stake. A day after the disclosure, Agrawal announced that Musk had been offered a seat on Twitter’s board&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1511320964813910017" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">adding</a>&nbsp;that Musk was both a “passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need&#8230;in the boardroom.” In response, Musk said he was looking forward to working with Agrawal and the Twitter board “to make significant improvements to Twitter.” The billionaire has previously accused Twitter of failing to adhere to free speech principles and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777261654605828" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">undermining democracy</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/04/07/owning-less-doing-more-elon-musk-updates-paperwork-on-twitter-purchase-as-employees-reportedly-raise-concerns/?sh=78fb8c5b2351">Owning Less, Doing More: Elon Musk Updates Paperwork On Twitter Purchase As Employees Reportedly Raise Concerns</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/05/both-trump-and-musk-want-to-screw-with-twitter-only-one-has-a-plan-thats-working/?sh=d5abeb510014">Both Trump And Musk Want To Screw With Twitter. Only One Has A Plan That’s Working.</a> (Forbes)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk Will Not Join Twitter’s Board

Investors on Monday cheered Elon Musk’s reveal that he has become Twitter’s largest shareholder, sending the stock up 27.1% and adding almost a billion dollars to Musk’s net worth.



Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/04/04/elon-musk-acquires-92-stake-in-twitter/?sh=7a9e482ce2e0">has taken</a>&nbsp;a 9.2% stake in Twitter, some 73.5 million shares, according to a new SEC filing. The investment is worth $3.7 billion today, up from $2.9 billion at the end of the previous trading day. The bulk of Musk’s fortune is in Tesla shares, and with that stock rapidly appreciating in value over the last two years, Musk is now the world’s richest person, worth over $300 billion.



Musk has suggested on Twitter that he’d like to see some changes made to Twitter, though it’s unclear exactly for what he wants and how he’ll use his large shareholding to cajole for change. That said, it is clear he’s unhappy with the company’s direction, criticizing it in recent posts for its moderation policies, which conservatives believe limit free speech.



Musk’s complaints amount to something of an indictment of Jack Dorsey’s time in the CEO role, a position <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/04/twitter-ceo-parag-agrawal-elon-musk-stake/?sh=5bb9f1d333d5">he turned over to</a> Parag Agrawal in November. Nevertheless, Musk’s appearance on the scene raised Dorsey’s personal fortune on Monday, too. Dorsey still holds a 2.25% stake in the company, a position almost $200 million more valuable after Musk unveiled his stake. Another billionaire Twitter cofounder, Ev Williams, saw his fortune increase by $90 million.Follow me on <a href="https://www.twitter.com/abebrown716" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter</a>. 



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/"></a>Abram Brown, Forbes Staff

Musk, Dorsey Add Nearly $1 Billion To Fortunes As Twitter Stock Surges 27%

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Tesla produced and delivered record numbers of vehicles during the first quarter of 2022, despite supply chain issues, Covid surges and health restrictions in China causing it to shut down production during the first few months of the year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Tesla delivered 310,048 vehicles from January through March, up 70% from the&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-q1-2021-vehicle-production-deliveries" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">same period in 2021</a>, and produced 305,407 vehicles, it said Saturday.



The Model 3 and Model Y accounted for the vast majority of deliveries in the quarter, which were up only slightly from the&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-q4-2021-vehicle-production-deliveries" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fourth quarter</a>&nbsp;of 2021, when it delivered nearly 309,000 vehicles.



Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1510288141495640070" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;it was an “exceptionally difficult quarter due to supply chain interruptions &amp; China zero Covid policy,” and applauded the work from the Tesla team and key suppliers that “saved the day.”



Wedbush Securities analysts Daniel Ives and John Katsingris wrote Saturday the first-quarter sales were a “positive step in the right direction,” noting that most investors will look past the slight miss on deliveries – Wall Street analysts were on average expecting 312,000, they said.



They believe delivery of roughly 20,000 to 25,000 units was pushed out of the first quarter into the second due to logistical and factory issues, “which makes this underlying demand number still look strong with a robust trajectory” for the rest of the year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Tesla is the largest electric vehicle seller in the world, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/01/02/tesla-says-it-delivered-record-936172-electric-vehicles-in-2021/?sh=70b2b7584d8b">reported a record</a>&nbsp;936,172 deliveries last year, but like all automakers, it is struggling with shortages of parts. The&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/02/business/tesla-sales-electric-vehicles.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a>&nbsp;Tesla has fared better than its competitors from the worldwide computer chip shortage because it was able to substitute chips needed for its vehicles. Covid-related shutdowns have also affected the company, as Tesla&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-suspends-production-shanghai-factory-4-days-comply-with-covid-curbs-2022-03-28/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;had to suspend production at its Shanghai factory for four days due to a staggered Covid-19 lockdown in the city earlier this week. The company has moved to open new factories, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/03/22/teslas-stalled-german-plant-opens-amid-chip-and-water-woes-rising-metal-costs/">the launch</a>&nbsp;of a “Gigafactory” in Germany last week. Tesla plans to host a&nbsp;<a href="https://austonia.com/cyber-rodeo-giga-texas" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“cyber rodeo”</a>&nbsp;as part of its grand opening of a vehicle production plant in Austin, Texas, next week.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



Tesla will&nbsp;<a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-deliveries-and-date-financial-results-webcast-first-quarter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announce</a>&nbsp;its financial results for the first quarter after market close on April 20.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/03/28/tesla-shares-jump-as-electric-car-maker-seeks-stock-split/">Tesla Shares Jump As Electric Car Maker Seeks Stock Split</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/01/02/tesla-says-it-delivered-record-936172-electric-vehicles-in-2021/?sh=70b2b7584d8b">Tesla Says It Delivered Record 936,172 Electric Vehicles In 2021</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/"></a>Anna Kaplan, Forbes Staff

Tesla Delivers Record 310,000 Vehicles During What Elon Musk Calls An ‘Exceptionally Difficult’ First Quarter

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has promoted Covid-19 misinformation and fiercely objected to vaccine mandates and stay-at-home orders throughout the pandemic, said on Monday he has “supposedly” contracted the virus for a second time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Musk said via Twitter he is experiencing “almost no symptoms.”



Musk’s skepticism over whether he has the disease echoes comments following his first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/11/13/elon-musk-says-he-tested-positive-for-covid-19/?sh=5d35690b47b8">brush</a>&nbsp;with the coronavirus in late 2020, when he questioned the accuracy of Covid tests after he said he received different results—two positive and two negative—on the same day.



He later said he “most likely” had a moderate case of Covid-19, though continued to question the accuracy of the tests.



Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/03/22/teslas-stalled-german-plant-opens-amid-chip-and-water-woes-rising-metal-costs/?sh=63e4d42d7f1c">traveled</a>&nbsp;to Germany last week for the opening of Tesla’s sprawling “Gigafactory” in Berlin, which was attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.https://embedly.forbes.com/widgets/media.html?type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;schema=twitter&amp;url=https%3A//twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1508356357967122434&amp;image=https%3A//i.embed.ly/1/image%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fabs.twimg.com%252Ferrors%252Flogo46x38.png%26key%3D3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/03/13/elon-musks-false-covid-predictions-a-timeline/?sh=1c446dde5b6d">downplayed</a>&nbsp;the impact of Covid-19 and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/04/29/elon-musk-rants-about-fascist-covid-19-closures-as-another-tesla-call-veers-off-course/?sh=1a4958866666">railed</a>&nbsp;against public health measures like stay-at-home orders during the early stages of the pandemic. He later spread unfounded skepticism and doubt over the safety of Covid vaccines, objecting to government and company mandates. He initially told the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-elon-musk.html?showTranscript=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times&nbsp;</a>he and his children would not take the vaccine once it was available, but later told&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Time</a>&nbsp;they had all received it (though he was still skeptical over the science). Musk has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-antivaccine-truckers-canada-b2002329.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">appeared</a>&nbsp;to back anti-vaccine mandate protests in Canada and&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/01/31/what-did-elon-musk-tweet-about-neil-young-joe-rogan-spotify-twitter-censorship/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">spoken</a>&nbsp;out against the purported&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/02/02/crosby-and-stills-join-nash-and-young-in-spotify-boycott-over-joe-rogan---heres-the-full-list/?sh=6f02e29cc504">censorship</a>&nbsp;of Joe Rogan for spreading Covid misinformation on Spotify.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Tesla has reportedly suspended production at its Shanghai factory for four days due to Covid-19 restrictions in the city, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-suspends-production-shanghai-factory-4-days-comply-with-covid-curbs-2022-03-28/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>. The city announced a two-stage&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/03/28/shanghai-enters-two-stage-lockdown-as-china-scrambles-to-contain-covid-surge/?sh=2ba2ff327919">lockdown</a>&nbsp;on Sunday to carry out mass testing for coronavirus to control a growing outbreak.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$270 billion. That’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=19b082e17999">Elon Musk’s current net worth</a>, according to&nbsp;Forbes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/03/13/elon-musks-false-covid-predictions-a-timeline/?sh=1c446dde5b6d">Elon Musk’s False Covid Predictions: A Timeline</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/11/13/elon-musk-says-he-tested-positive-for-covid-19/?sh=5d35690b47b8">Elon Musk Says He Tested Positive For Covid-19</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-vaccinated-but-opposes-mandates-time-magazine-freedom-2021-12?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elon Musk says he and his family are vaccinated but that mandates for the masses are an &#8216;erosion of freedom&#8217;</a> (Insider)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/"></a>Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

Billionaire Elon Musk Receives Axel Springer Award

Elon Musk Says He ‘Supposedly’ Has Covid Again

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



GameStop Chair and Chewy cofounder Ryan Cohen disclosed he purchased more than $10 million in shares of the brick-and-mortar game-seller on Tuesday as the stock skyrocketed more than 30%—a disclosure that helped the so-called meme stock surge another 15% in after-hours trading.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



In an evening&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001326380/000092189522000948/xslF345X03/form412128005_03222022.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>, Cohen disclosed his investment firm RC Ventures purchased 100,000 GameStop shares on Tuesday for a combined $10.2 million, at prices ranging from $96.81 to $108.82.



&#8220;I put my money where my mouth is,&#8221; the 36-year-old&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ryan-cohen/?sh=16e7d59e4f2b">tweeted</a>&nbsp;shortly after the filing was released.



In a separate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001326380/000092189522000946/sc13da612128005_03222022.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>, the entrepreneur disclosed his firm owns a total 9.1 million shares purchased for about $86.1 million, excluding brokerage commissions.



Shares of the brick-and-mortar retailer surged more than 15% in post-market trading following the disclosure, reaching $142.25 by about 7 p.m. ET, after skyrocketing nearly 31% on Tuesday; as of Tuesday evening, Cohen&#8217;s stake is worth more than $1.1 billion.



Buoyed by the broader market, this week&#8217;s stock surge helped GameStop recover losses after the firm&nbsp;<a href="https://news.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-reports-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2021-results" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">posted</a>&nbsp;a worse-than-expected fourth-quarter loss of $147.5 million last week, compared to a profit of $80.5 million in the period one year prior.



A representative for Cohen did not immediately respond to&nbsp;Forbes&#8216; request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Last January, Reddit traders famously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/01/26/gamestops-massive-surge-creates-a-new-billionaire-as-wall-street-bets-against-reddit-traders/">declared</a>&nbsp;GameStop their meme stock of choice as they bought up Wall Street&#8217;s most heavily shorted companies. The company was among the worst-hit brick-and-mortar retailers over the past decade as independent companies like Minecraft gobbled up market share, but its shares began to surge in 2020, when Cohen started buying up stock at about $6 and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/01/26/gamestops-massive-surge-creates-a-new-billionaire-as-wall-street-bets-against-reddit-traders/">blasting</a>&nbsp;management for &#8220;lack[ing] the mindset, resources and plan needed to [help GameStop] become a dominant sector player.&#8221; Cohen was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/04/08/gamestop-taps-billionaire-investor-ryan-cohen-as-board-chair-sending-shares-surging-anew/?sh=28e21e8a4db6">tapped</a>&nbsp;as the firm&#8217;s chair last April but has so far remained fairly mum about his turnaround plans.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



After skyrocketing more than 800% last January, GameStop has continued to draw massive fanfare from retail investors, despite bouts of intense volatility. Shares are down about 59% since an all-time high set in June, but they&#8217;re up a staggering 3,000% over the past two years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/03/07/bed-bath--beyond-stock-skyrockets-after-billionaire-gamestop-chair-cohen-discloses-120-million-investment/">Bed Bath &amp; Beyond Stock Skyrockets After Billionaire GameStop Chair Cohen Discloses $120 Million Investment</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/01/06/gamestop-shares-skyrocket-again-after-nft-and-crypto-market-plans-emerge/?sh=5047e5f11549">GameStop Stock Skyrockets Again After NFT And Crypto Market Plans Emerge</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/"></a>Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff

GERMANY-SHARES-GAMES-LEISURE

GameStop Billionaire Ryan Cohen Buys Another $10 Million In Stock As Shares Skyrocket

A Guide To All The Outrageous Mansions And Estates Owned By Sanctioned Russian Billionaires

A high school drop-out, Nikhil Kamath is India’s youngest billionaire and with a keen interest in Africa.



IF YOU HAVE A PLAN, DOES IT MATTER THAT YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED SCHOOL? Ask Nikhil Kamath, the 35-year-old co-founder of wealth management firms Zerodha and True Beacon and India’s youngest billionaire as per Forbes India’s 2021 India Rich List.



The big name in Indian stock-broking and retail brokerage dropped out of school at the age of 15 to play chess and developed a passion for the stockmarkets and investing in asset classes. He started equity trading at the age of 17 and his first business at 19. He founded Zerodha and True Beacon with his brother Nithin in the last decade, and together, the brothers were reportedly worth $2.59 billion in 2021.



Today, Kamath is creating wealth for some of the richest people on the planet, with a disruptive product – an open-ended fund with no management fees or entry and exit fees.



This commission-free investing model has drawn comparisons with trading platform Robinhood in the United States.



How does he keep this model sustainable in the long-term and how is he looking at African investors? Kamath answers on a Zoom call from Bengaluru, known as India’s Silicon Valley and which is just the setting for his booming fintech.



The man bullish about both India and Africa starts with: “It’s our endeavour to become totally client-aligned, so we have eliminated fixed fees you would associate with a typical fund. It’s a wholesale game in a way, we charge very little, about Rs20 ($0.26) per transaction as an execution fee. We have close to 15%-18% share in the Indian markets, so even though Rs20 does not sound like a lot, with millions of 



transactions a day, that adds up to be a considerable number.” The epiphany for the model came a few years ago when Kamath



was trying to allocate his own capital to private banks and wealth managers and realized the ineptness in the system.



“So to rid the ecosystem of a lot of these inefficiencies, I decided to launch the asset management company (Zerodha), basically building a product I hoped will be available for somebody like me to invest in.”



The seasoned derivatives trader is now eyeing the African market, and hopes to set up base in the continent’s big economies like South Africa and especially Nigeria, for “the new demographic opportunities the region offers”.



India’s regulatory framework is also one of the best that makes it attractive for African investors, a point Kamath concurs with.



“As the world is getting globalized, I think everybody is looking for diversification, not just amongst asset classes but between geographies. So for an African ultra high networth individual (HNI) to participate in India’s growth would be a great opportunity.



“The problem up until now is there haven’t been very many efficient ways of doing it. We are just trying to solve that by providing the connectivity and transparency for these ultra HNIs from Africa to invest in India and get some kind of global diversification. Africa in many ways is a big emerging market for us, and the opportunities are plenty.



“The good thing we have going with India and Africa is there are deep cultural ties going back many decades, and a familiarity with how both the regions have evolved. So I would think it’s natural for increased collaboration and cross-country deals.”



But what does Kamath think of the capital markets and regulatory frameworks in Africa? How would a fund like his work here, we ask, as he hopes to change the nuances of investing.



“What has really worked for India in the last five years is the adoption of technology in the banking and fintech universe. And the regulators have allowed for an ecosystem where this adoption has thrived and happened sooner. Maybe that is a good lesson for Africa, to not go the traditional route of dealing with red tape but to make things more open and integrating technology faster might help reduce the time to get licences and processes working in Africa.”



And coming from a country with a rapidly growing startup ecosystem, the billionaire has advice too for Africa’s young entrepreneurs: “Don’t think too local; there is plenty of innovation happening in different pockets of the world. Actively engage, invest and create, try and learn from the mistakes of others.”



–For the full interview, visit <a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2021/billionaire-nikhil-kamath-on-disruptive-model-of-managing-assets-of-the-ultra-rich/">www.cnbcafrica.com </a>

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