Sam Teller, who worked closely with Musk from 2014 to 2019,
detailed a series of meetings that his former boss held with representatives
from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. His remarks came during testimony
that also shed light on the quirks of a billionaire who runs Tesla, rocket ship
maker SpaceX and Twitter.
Among other things, Teller said he sometimes had to
“soften" Musk's blunt emails. Teller attributed Musk's brusque manner to
Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that Musk acknowledged having during a
May 2021 television appearance hosting “Saturday Night Live."
Teller's testimony came on the ninth day of a trial
triggered by a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Tesla shareholders
alleging Musk misled them with tweets in August 2018. In the tweets, Musk
indicated he had locked up the money to lead a buyout of the electric
automaker, ending its then eight-year history as a publicly held company. The
case is scheduled to be turned over to the nine-person jury Friday.
Musk, 51, spent much of his roughly eight hours on the
witness stand earlier in the trial maintaining he had a valid reason for
disclosing he had “ funding secured" for a Tesla buyout in an Aug. 7, 2018
tweet at $420 deal — a price that valued the electric automaker at $72 billion
at that time.
Teller was summoned to the stand Wednesday by Musk's lawyers
in an attempt to substantiate and elaborate upon the billionaire's testimony.
In the last of five meetings held with Saudi fund that began
in January 2017, Teller said Musk became increasingly excited as he discussed
taking Tesla private with Yasir al-Rumayyan, a governor for the Saudi fund,
during a July 31, 2018 meeting.
Although specific financing amounts were discussed, Teller
recalled Musk pointing out to al-Rumayyan that taking Tesla private would be
expensive.
“Yasir was, like, ‘Don't worry about it, we've got a lot of
money,'” Teller said.
As he watched the two men happily conclude their meeting,
Teller said, “It was my sense they made a handshake deal to proceed" with
taking Tesla private.
A week later, Musk tweeted he had the money for the buyout
shortly after being alerted that the Financial Times was about to publish a
story disclosing the Saudi fund had built a 5% stake in Tesla — a stake that he
knew about but hadn't been publicly announced.
Amid widespread confusion about whether Musk's Twitter
account had been hacked or he was joking, Musk followed up a few hours later
with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent.
The prospect of Tesla stock being sold caused the shares to
soar during a 10-day period covered by the shareholder lawsuit that led to the
current trial. The stock price dropped after Musk scrapped the going-private
proposal, resulting in billions of dollars in losses, based on the estimates
provided in testimony by an economist hired by the shareholder attorneys as an
expert witness in the trial.
After the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Musk's
tweets were misleading, he and Tesla reached a $40 million settlement in
September 2018 without acknowledging wrongdoing. U.S. District Judge Edward
Chen, who is presiding over the current trial, also has declared Musk's tweets
to be falsehoods, leaving it to the jurors to decide if he posted them
recklessly.
During his testimony, Teller revealed that Musk doesn't like
anyone filtering information for him. “He is the type of CEO who likes to
absorb his communications," Teller said.
Even so, Teller likened his job to an air traffic controller
confronted with “a lot of problem solving" at all hours. “Most of my
waking hours were working," Teller said, a gruelling schedule that led him
to stop working for Musk in 2019. “I was pretty tired and it was time to do
something else,' Teller said.