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Elon Musk formally moves to terminate Twitter’s $44 billion acquisition

Credit: Kevin Krejci/Flickr CC BY 2.0

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In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tesla CEO Elon Musk formally moved to terminate his acquisition attempt of social media platform Twitter. Musk and the Twitter board had agreed to a buyout at $54.20 per share, or $44 billion.

In a letter, Musk’s legal team stated that despite the Tesla CEO’s requests for critical data on the social media platform’s users, Twitter had been uncooperative. Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler wrote that “Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.”

Musk had demanded more data from Twitter after the social media company noted in an SEC filing that less than 5% of its users are fake accounts. Musk has noted that he believes Twitter’s estimates are grossly inaccurate.

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information,” the lawyer wrote.

“Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months notwithstanding his repeated, detailed clarifications intended to simplify Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information sought in Mr. Musk’s original requests,” Ringler added.

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The lawyer added that while Twitter did eventually provide Musk with some information, the information was limited and came with strings attached.

“While Twitter has provided some information, that information has come with strings attached, use limitations or other artificial formatting features, which has rendered some of the information minimally useful to Mr. Musk and his advisors. For example, when Twitter finally provided access to the eight developer “APIs” first explicitly requested by Mr. Musk in the May 25 Letter, those APIs contained a rate limit lower than what Twitter provides to its largest enterprise customers,” he wrote.

Ringler also noted that Twitter had breached its merger agreement with Musk because of “materially inaccurate representations.” This is reportedly based on Musk’s own preliminary review of spam accounts on Twitter. The social media company, for its part, has maintained that it’s not possible to calculate spam accounts from solely public information.

“While this analysis remains ongoing, all indications suggest that several of Twitter’s public disclosures regarding its mDAUs are either false or materially misleading. Despite public speculation on this point, Mr. Musk did not waive his right to review Twitter’s data and information simply because he chose not to seek this data and information before entering into the Merger Agreement. In fact, he negotiated access and information rights within the Merger Agreement precisely so that he could review data and information that is important to Twitter’s business before financing and completing the transaction,” Ringler wrote.

In response to Musk’s filing, Twitter Board Chairman Bret Taylor has stated that Twitter is still committed to closing the deal with the Tesla CEO. Taylor also made it a point that Twitter is looking to close Musk’s acquisition at the agreed-upon price of $44 billion.

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“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” Taylor wrote.

Musk’s filing can be viewed below.

Elon Twitter Acquisition Termination by Simon Alvarez on Scribd

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Tesla seen as early winner as Canada reopens door to China-made EVs

Tesla had already prepared for Chinese exports to Canada in 2023 by equipping its Shanghai Gigafactory to produce a Canada-specific version of the Model Y.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla seems poised to be an early beneficiary of Canada’s decision to reopen imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, following the removal of a 100% tariff that halted shipments last year.

Thanks to Giga Shanghai’s capability to produce Canadian-spec vehicles, it might only be a matter of time before Tesla is able to export vehicles to Canada from China once more. 

Under the new U.S.–Canada trade agreement, Canada will allow up to 49,000 vehicles per year to be imported from China at a 6.1% tariff, with the quota potentially rising to 70,000 units within five years, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

Half of the initial quota is reserved for vehicles priced under CAD 35,000, a threshold above current Tesla models, though the electric vehicle maker could still benefit from the rule change, as noted in a Reuters report.

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Tesla had already prepared for Chinese exports to Canada in 2023 by equipping its Shanghai Gigafactory to produce a Canada-specific version of the Model Y. That year, Tesla began shipping vehicles from Shanghai to Canada, contributing to a sharp 460% year-over-year increase in China-built vehicle imports through Vancouver. 

When Ottawa imposed a 100% tariff in 2024, however, Tesla halted those shipments and shifted Canadian supply to its U.S. and Berlin factories. With tariffs now reduced, Tesla could quickly resume China-to-Canada exports.

Beyond manufacturing flexibility, Tesla could also benefit from its established retail presence in Canada. The automaker operates 39 stores across Canada, while Chinese brands like BYD and Nio have yet to enter the Canadian market directly. Tesla’s relatively small lineup, which is comprised of four core models plus the Cybertruck, allows it to move faster on marketing and logistics than competitors with broader portfolios.

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Tesla confirms that work on Dojo 3 has officially resumed

“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo 3,” Elon Musk wrote in a post on X.

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla has restarted work on its Dojo 3 initiative, its in-house AI training supercomputer, now that its AI5 chip design has reached a stable stage. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed the update in a recent post on X.

Tesla’s Dojo 3 initiative restarted

In a post on X, Musk said that with the AI5 chip design now “in good shape,” Tesla will resume work on Dojo 3. He added that Tesla is hiring engineers interested in working on what he expects will become the highest-volume AI chips in the world.

“Now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape, Tesla will restart work on Dojo3. If you’re interested in working on what will be the highest volume chips in the world, send a note to AI_Chips@Tesla.com with 3 bullet points on the toughest technical problems you’ve solved,” Musk wrote in his post on X. 

Musk’s comment followed a series of recent posts outlining Tesla’s broader AI chip roadmap. In another update, he stated that Tesla’s AI4 chip alone would achieve self-driving safety levels well above human drivers, AI5 would make vehicles “almost perfect” while significantly enhancing Optimus, and AI6 would be focused on Optimus and data center applications. 

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Musk then highlighted that AI7/Dojo 3 will be designed to support space-based AI compute.

Tesla’s AI roadmap

Musk’s latest comments helped resolve some confusion that emerged last year about Project Dojo’s future. At the time, Musk stated on X that Tesla was stepping back from Dojo because it did not make sense to split resources across multiple AI chip architectures. 

He suggested that clustering large numbers of Tesla AI5 and AI6 chips for training could effectively serve the same purpose as a dedicated Dojo successor. “In a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude,” Musk wrote at the time.

Musk later reinforced that idea by responding positively to an X post stating that Tesla’s AI6 chip would effectively be the new Dojo. Considering his recent updates on X, however, it appears that Tesla will be using AI7, not AI6, as its dedicated Dojo successor. The CEO did state that Tesla’s AI7, AI8, and AI9 chips will be developed in short, nine-month cycles, so Dojo’s deployment might actually be sooner than expected. 

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Elon Musk’s xAI brings 1GW Colossus 2 AI training cluster online

Elon Musk shared his update in a recent post on social media platform X.

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Credit: xAI

xAI has brought its Colossus 2 supercomputer online, making it the first gigawatt-scale AI training cluster in the world, and it’s about to get even bigger in a few months.

Elon Musk shared his update in a recent post on social media platform X.

Colossus 2 goes live

The Colossus 2 supercomputer, together with its predecessor, Colossus 1, are used by xAI to primarily train and refine the company’s Grok large language model. In a post on X, Musk stated that Colossus 2 is already operational, making it the first gigawatt training cluster in the world. 

But what’s even more remarkable is that it would be upgraded to 1.5 GW of power in April. Even in its current iteration, however, the Colossus 2 supercomputer already exceeds the peak demand of San Francisco.  

Commentary from users of the social media platform highlighted the speed of execution behind the project. Colossus 1 went from site preparation to full operation in 122 days, while Colossus 2 went live by crossing the 1-GW barrier and is targeting a total capacity of roughly 2 GW. This far exceeds the speed of xAI’s primary rivals.

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Funding fuels rapid expansion

xAI’s Colossus 2 launch follows xAI’s recently closed, upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, which exceeded its initial $15 billion target. The company said the capital will be used to accelerate infrastructure scaling and AI product development.

The round attracted a broad group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco also continued their support, helping xAI build what it describes as the world’s largest GPU clusters.

xAI said the funding will accelerate its infrastructure buildout, enable rapid deployment of AI products to billions of users, and support research tied to its mission of understanding the universe. The company noted that its Colossus 1 and 2 systems now represent more than one million H100 GPU equivalents, alongside recent releases including the Grok 4 series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine. Training is also already underway for its next flagship model, Grok 5.

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