Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, has been acquitted of any crime after tweeting that he had “funding secured” to return the electric carmaker to private ownership.
Shareholders claimed he misled them with his posts in August 2018, causing them to lose billions of dollars.
Musk could have been ordered to pay billions of dollars in damages if found guilty.
On Friday afternoon, the nine jurors took less than two hours to reach a decision on the class-action lawsuit.
Mr. Musk, who had requested that the trial be moved to Texas, where Tesla is based, claiming that he would not be able to get a fair trial in San Francisco, welcomed the outcome.
“Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!” he wrote on Twitter, the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion last October.
I am grateful for the jury’s unanimous verdict of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case.”
Mr. Musk’s tweet on August 7, 2018, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420,” was central to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs also argued Mr. Musk had lied when he tweeted later in the day that “investor support is confirmed”.
According to an economist hired by the shareholders, investor losses were calculated as high as $12bn, after many made decisions about buying and selling their shares based on the tweet.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Mr. Musk over his tweets, accusing him of lying to investors. Mr. Musk agreed to step aside as Tesla board chairman and settled for $20m.
During the three-week trial, Mr. Musk – who also leads SpaceX and Twitter – had argued he thought he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for the deal.
