To my knowledge, he has never lied about the present financial state of his companies. That gives him credibility in a way e.g. Yaccarino bullshitting about what fraction of Twitter’s advertisers have returned does not.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit...
The end result is left out every time the "court finds" articles are linked. The jury found the opposite, which is what actually matters.
The facts are not in dispute here. He tweeted "funding secured" and funding was not secured. He announced intentions to take it private at a given price, which did not happen.
He misrepresented the financial state of his company.
Luckily the jury had sense that the tweet was harmless in the end.
The judge ignored his stake in SpaceX he could have leveraged and mainly the Saudi Arabia firm that he was in talks with in taking Tesla private would not testify and then said the exact opposite:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23040961/elon-musk-saudi-...
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/1/23/musk-on-trial-sa...
So in the end it's do you believe Elon or the Saudis?
The judge sided with the Saudis.
Do you agree with that logic or do you trust the courts over your peers?
(ie. what "metric" would you use "for what constitutes truth"?)
Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.
I've been reading about low-orbit satellite since at least the late 1990s when it must have been Slashdot articles then. There have been several plans, but the one whose name I remember was Iridium. I believe it became operational, but only ever managed to be used for voice telephony. It's been bankrupted and bought by other companies since then.
This is an absurdly difficult market to break into, and everyone has failed to one degree or another, with the degrees of failure all clustering around the really extreme end of that spectrum. This is ignoring any technological challenge (of which there are apparently more than a few).
He is claiming to have done a (business) thing that has been demonstrated to be nearly impossible. A thing which, if he hasn't done it and is merely lying about, we might not know for months or years.
It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of this, and no one owes him the benefit of doubt on this issue or any other. It is perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical even if you do not believe the man a liar. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.
Capital Raise
4,281 days since Elon Musk said Tesla will never need to raise capital again. (2/12/2012)
"Tesla does not need to ever raise another funding round." Elon Musk, quoted by John Voelcker in Green Car Reports
4,052 days since Elon Musk raised $195.7M in common stock. (9/28/2012)
3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $313M in common stock. (5/16/2013) 3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $600M in convertible notes. (5/16/2013)
[...]
1,157 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (9/1/2020)
1,059 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (12/8/2020)
