Musk cast as prankish Twitter titterer

Twitter filed a forceful complaint against Elon Musk on Tuesday, alleging he had treated his $44bn offer for the social media company as an “elaborate joke”. With legal experts assessing Twitter’s arguments as strong, the joke could soon be on the billionaire entrepreneur.

The suit asks Delaware chancery court to force Musk to honour his agreement to buy the company, just days after he announced he was backing out, alleging Twitter had breached its obligations by not sharing sufficient information on fake accounts.

The complaint accuses him of “a long list of material contractual breaches . . . that have cast a pall over Twitter and its business”, including putting the deal on hold “pending satisfaction of imaginary conditions”, breaching financing obligations and misusing confidential information. He had also used Twitter’s own platform against it, with frequent jabs at Twitter and its leadership through his tweets, report Sujeet Indap and Hannah Murphy.

“For Musk, it would seem, Twitter, the interests of its stockholders, the transaction Musk agreed to, and the court process to enforce it all constitute an elaborate joke,” the complaint said. After the lawsuit was filed yesterday, he tweeted: “Oh the irony lol.”

Ann Lipton, a corporate law professor at Tulane University said Twitter was characterising the deal as Musk deciding “to buy Twitter on a lark, essentially that he bullied the board into taking this deal and now he’s treating it as a plaything and walking away because the market dropped . . . while hurting Twitter stockholders”.

“We already knew Musk’s claims were weak. Twitter’s complaint hammers that home,” she added.

Others are putting money on Twitter. Its shares jumped 8 per cent on Wednesday after Hindenburg Research — best known as a short seller — said it had built “a significant” stake in the social media company. “Musk has squandered much of his leverage, largely through misadvised and compulsive tweets,” Hindenburg founder Nate Anderson said in an interview with the Financial Times. “Twitter has a strong case.”

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. Google slows hiring in difficult times
Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai told employees on Tuesday that the company would be “slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year”. He also warned about the worsening economic outlook and said Google would be “pausing development” in some areas to focus its investments. Microsoft and Meta have also eased recruitment in some areas in recent weeks.

2. Gates tops up foundation with $20bn
Bill Gates is pouring another $20bn into the charitable foundation he and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates run, pledging a 50 per cent increase in its annual distributions as he warns of “huge global setbacks” to the fights against preventable disease, inequality and poverty. The new funding will swell the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s endowment by 40 per cent.

3. EU extends influence over tech deals
An EU court ruled that Brussels has the jurisdiction to examine the $8bn merger of US biotech groups Illumina and Grail even though the latter company has no revenues in Europe and the deal does not require member states’ scrutiny, expanding the powers of European regulators. The ruling could set a significant precedent because it extends Brussels’ reach over deals in sectors such as technology and biosciences.

4. Snap to test NFTs on Snapchat
Snap is exploring plans to allow users to showcase non-fungible tokens on Snapchat, as social media platforms increasingly turn to digital collectibles as a means of attracting influencers and their fans. The camera app is preparing to test a feature that would allow NFT artists to showcase their designs as augmented reality filters, according to two people familiar with the situation.

5. Inside Celsius: how the crypto lenders ground to a halt
The decline of Celsius has been labelled the crypto community’s “Lehman Brothers moment”, reports today’s Big Read. It loaned deposits from retail investors to large crypto companies and promised exceptionally high interest rates. But it now has a hole in its balance sheet of as much as $2bn and is facing collapse.

The FT is this week launching a cryptocurrency newsletter to help guide you through the crash. Premium subscribers can sign up here.

Tech tools — Nothing Phone (1)

Nothing’s slow reveal of its something smartphone culminated on Tuesday with details of pricing and availability. The Nothing Phone (1) should be good value beginning at £399 when it goes on sale next week. As well as the UK, it will be released in over 40 markets, but US availability will be limited. Nothing had already shown off the phone’s design last month, featuring the same transparent casing as its debut earbuds product and some unusual light strips on the rear.

“This Nothing Phone (1)’s punchy price point is reflected in the trade-offs the company has made in a number of areas, notably the decision to select a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ chipset rather than the top-of-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 platform, and the dual-camera configuration,” commented Ben Wood, Chief Analyst at the CCS Insight consultancy.

“At a glance, the front face of the Nothing Phone (1) bears a remarkable resemblance to the Apple iPhone given its familiar aluminium frame and similar camera array. It could almost be mistaken for an iPhone running the Android operating system. This is not a bad thing, given the huge popularity of the iPhone, but underlines just how hard it is to differentiate in the current smartphone market.”