Elon Musk's tweet about Tesla resulted in his innocence.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has been cleared of wrongdoing for a tweet in which he said he had funding secured to take the electric carmaker back into private ownership.

Shareholders argued he misled them with his posts in August 2018, and they had lost billions of dollars because of them.

The proposed 72bn £60bn buyout never materialised. If found liable, Musk could have been ordered to pay out billions in damages.

It took the nine jurors less than two hours to reach their verdict on the class-action lawsuit on Friday afternoon. Mr Musk - who had wanted the trial moved to Texas, where Tesla is based, arguing he could not get a fair trial in San Francisco - welcomed the outcome.

Taking to Twitter, the social media platform he bought for 44bn last October, he posted Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed I am deeply appreciative of the jurys unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case.

Central to the lawsuit was Mr Musks tweet on 7 August 2018 Am considering taking Tesla private at 420. Funding secured. The plaintiffs also argued Mr Musk had lied when he tweeted later in the day that investor support is confirmed. The stock price surged after the tweets, but fell back again within days as it became clear the deal would not go through.

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 Arabias sovereign wealth fund for the deal.

During his nearly nine hours on the witness stand, the worlds second-richest man said Just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly.

Shareholders had argued that funding secured suggested more than a verbal agreement.

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