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Elon Musk’s Twitter trial delay request denied, but addition of whistleblower complaint gets approval
Elon Musk’s request to delay his trial against Twitter has been denied by a Delaware court. However, Musk’s request to include the claims put forth by whistleblower and former Twitter security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko in his countersuit against the social media company has also been approved.
The ruling was outlined by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick in a letter. With this in mind, Elon Musk has gained a small win and a loss in his initial session with Twitter in court. Musk’s legal team had requested to push the trial back to mid-November, but with the rejection of the request, the trial is still expected to begin on October 17, 2022.
“Defendants’ motion to extend the case schedule is denied… In arguing that trial should be delayed by at least four weeks, Defendants contend that no external deadline creates any urgency. They observe that the merger agreement’s “termination date of October 24, 2022is automatically stayed if litigation is commenced, and debt financing has an outside date of April 25, 2023.”
“They adduce, therefore, that ‘any prejudice to Twitter can be easily mitigated by . . . continu[ing] the trial date.’ But the opposite is true. I previously rejected Defendants’ arguments in response to Twitter’s motion to expedite, making clear that the longer the delay until trial, the greater the risk of irreparable harm to Twitter. Indeed,Twitter has represented that the anticipated risk of harm has materialized over the course of this litigation.
“Twitter ‘has suffered increased employee attrition,’ which ‘undermin[es]the company’s ability to pursue its operations goals. The company has been forced for months to manage under the constrains of a repudiated merger agreement, including Defendants’ continued refusal to provide any consents for matters under the operating covenants. ‘I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify,” McCormick wrote.
But while Musk’s efforts to delay the trial were unsuccessful, the Tesla CEO’s efforts to augment his countersuit with former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko’s whistleblower complaint were successful. Zatko had accused Twitter of fraud while also noting that the social media company did not really care to find out how many of its users were spam or fake accounts. Twitter, for its part, has been dismissive of Zatko’s whistleblower complaints.
Twitter lawyers, during their session in a Delaware Chancery court on Tuesday, claimed that Zatko’s accusations do not meet the legal standard to nullify its merger contract with Musk even if they were true. Twitter’s legal team also noted that while Zatko did raise security concerns during his tenure with the company, Twitter investigated the issues internally and found that the security chief’s concerns were “without merit.”
McCormick, however, does not seem to agree with Twitter’s legal team on the issue.
“Defendant’s motion to amend is granted… The newly published Whistleblower Complaint would be grounds in most instances to permit an amendment under the low bar of Rule 15(a). Twitter argues that the amendment would be futile, but their arguments falter against the exceedingly movant-friendly standard of Rule 15(a). I am reticent to say more concerning the merits of the counterclaims at this posture before they have been fully litigated. The world will have to wait for the post-trial decision.
“Twitter also argues that the amendment would be prejudicial to the extent it would expand discovery and extend the case schedule, and Twitter’s arguments to this effect are far more forceful than Twitter’s futility arguments. But that prejudice can be mitigated by cabining additional discovery to the new allegations and maintaining the existing case schedule. So that is what I will do,” McCormick wrote.
Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick’s letter can be viewed below.
Letter Decision Resolving Defendants' Motion for Leave to Amend and Extend Case Schedule (003) by Simon Alvarez on Scribd
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Elon Musk
ARK’s SpaceX IPO Guide makes a compelling case on why $1.75T may not be the ceiling
ARK Invest breaks down six reasons SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO valuation may be justified.
ARK Invest, which holds SpaceX as its largest Venture Fund position at 17% of net assets, has published a detailed investor guide to why a SpaceX IPO may be grounded in a $1.75 trillion target valuation.
The financial case starts with Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, which has surpassed 10 million active subscribers globally as of early 2026, with 2026 revenue projected to exceed $20 billion. ARK’s research puts the total satellite connectivity market opportunity at roughly $160 billion annually at scale, and Starlink is adding customers faster than any telecom network in history. That growth alone would justify a substantial valuation.
Additionally, ARK notes that SpaceX has reduced the cost per kilogram to orbit from roughly $15,600 in 2008 to under $1,000 today through reusable Falcon 9 hardware. A fully operational Starship targeting sub-$100 per kilogram would represent a significant cost decline and open markets that do not currently exist. SpaceX executed a staggering 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. That infrastructure position took decades to build and would be nearly impossible to replicate at comparable cost.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
The February 2026 merger with xAI added a layer to the valuation that straightforward financial models struggle to capture. ARK argues that at sub-$100 launch costs, orbital data centers could deliver compute roughly 25% cheaper than ground-based alternatives, without power grid delays, permitting friction, or land constraints. Musk has stated a goal of deploying 100 gigawatts of AI computing capacity per year from orbit.
The $1.75 trillion figure itself is not a conventional earnings multiple. At roughly 95x trailing revenue, it prices in Starlink’s adoption curve, Starship’s cost trajectory, and the orbital compute thesis together. The public S-1 prospectus, due at least 15 days before the June roadshow, will give investors their first complete look at the financials to test those assumptions. ARK’s position is that the track record earns the benefit of the doubt. Fully reusable rockets were considered unrealistic for years. Starlink was considered financially unviable. Both happened on timelines that surprised skeptics.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
ARK’s SpaceX IPO Guide makes a compelling case on why $1.75T may not be the ceiling
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
