Latest From Sun Valley: Elon Musk Sidesteps Questions About Twitter Deal

Elon Musk wasn’t interested in discussing his most recent bombshell while addressing attendees at the Sun Valley Media Conference Saturday morning, just a day after he announced that he’s halting his planned $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Musk sidestepped questions about the hot Twitter mess while being interviewed in the marquee address, according to Bloomberg.

“Musk dodged questions on Twitter at Sun Valley,” Bloomberg reporter Sonali Basak tweeted. Instead of discussing the digital media deal that now looks dead in the water pending legal action from Twitter, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO spoke “heavily on life on Mars as ‘civilization life insurance.'” Musk said earlier this year that he’s aiming for a human landing on the planet by 2029.

“At least one attendee wasn’t perturbed about the lack of detail on Twitter due to pending litigation,” Basak’s tweet continued. Musk mostly “discussed SpaceX progress to get mankind [to Mars]” during his panel interview. Musk also talked about boosting birth rates on Earth, per Reuters.

This year’s relatively quiet conference — which brings together a who’s who of billionaire executives from across the tech, entertainment and media sectors courtesy of investment firm Allen & Co. — received a dose of drama after Musk publicly pulled out of the deal Friday.

Reminder: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is present at Sun Valley as well.

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A few attendees told Bloomberg that they had debated investing in the social media company ahead of the deal’s completion, though Musk’s “volatile nature” gave them pause.

In response to Musk’s Friday announcement, Twitter’s board chairman Bret Taylor tweeted its commitment “to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk” and threatened “to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”

Musk and his team filed an eight-page letter to Twitter and with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing the motivation behind their change of heart: “Twitter failed to respond to repeated requests for information over the past two months, or obtain his consent before taking actions that would impact its business – such as firing two key executives.”

Shortly after Musk initially went after Twitter, his public remarks began to show signs of buyer’s remorse. In May, Musk tweeted that the deal was “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” Since the market closed on Thursday, Twitter’s share price has fallen more than 5% and the stock is down nearly 50% from its 52-week high of $73.34.

The Information reported earlier this week that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who works closely with Musk as the billionaire partly funds the artificial intelligence company, would serve as the interviewer Saturday morning. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Musk’s Twitter takeover was in “jeopardy.”

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