Mars, birth rates, but no Twitter: Elon Musk captivates Sun Valley moguls
By Daybreak Chmielewski and Hyunjoo Jin
(Reuters) -Elon Musk prevented discussing the collapsed Twitter deal as he addressed an viewers of moguls on Saturday in Solar Valley, two sources who attended the convention instructed Reuters.
In a wide-reaching interview, Musk spent most of his time speaking about colonizing Mars and extolling the virtues of boosting delivery charges on Earth, mentioned the sources. Musk, chief government of Tesla Inc and rocket firm Area X, has lengthy advocated establishing a civilization on the pink planet.
Musk earlier this week mentioned he’ll do his finest to assist what he referred to as “the underpopulation disaster,” following a media report that mentioned he had twins with a prime government at his brain-chip start-up Neuralink.
He spoke about how delivery charges are declining in rich nations, a topic he has explored extensively on Twitter.
The billionaire entrepreneur took the stage on the Allen & Co Solar Valley Convention, an annual gathering of media and expertise executives in Idaho, lower than 24 hours after he introduced he was terminating his $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter Inc.
The interview was performed by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, a man-made intelligence analysis firm based by Musk and a number of other others.
Musk’s arrival on the Allen & Co Solar Valley Convention delivered a jolt to the off-record occasion this week, the place the headline-making sometimes occurs past the prying eyes of the media.
“It simply looks as if an absolute mess,” mentioned one senior media government, who spoke on situation of anonymity forward of the interview. “The man makes his personal guidelines … I might hate to be Twitter, the place it’s important to take this man critically.”
Solar Valley is often lined like an athleisure model of the Met Gala, with photographers capturing the arrivals of fleece-vested media moguls and reporters making be aware of power-lunches on the Konditorei cafe on the property.
One Hollywood power-broker Friday expressed hope that the Musk interview would enliven the convention’s staid, cerebral ambiance this yr.
Hours later, Musk’s attorneys delivered an eight-page letter to Twitter, saying he deliberate to name off the deal to amass the social community. The doc, filed with the Securities and Change Fee, alleged Twitter failed to reply to repeated requests for data over the previous two months, or receive his consent earlier than taking actions that may impression its enterprise, resembling firing two key executives.
Up till that time, conversations in media circles centered on Wall Avenue’s reappraisal of the streaming enterprise within the wake of Netflix Inc’s subscriber losses.
One digital media government mentioned Hollywood, which has sometimes been insulated from recessions, is out of the blue nervous about how a worsening financial system will have an effect on their multi-billion-dollar investments in streaming providers.
“For the primary time, individuals are conscious the financial system does impression the leisure enterprise, as a result of inflation does impression churn,” the digital media government mentioned, referring to subscribers leaving a service. “Individuals at the moment are saying, ‘Wow, will folks actually pay for 3 of these items?’”
Following Musk’s announcement, one chief government famous the elephant within the room, Saturday’s remarks may effectively be uncomfortable to 2 convention attendees: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Monetary Officer Ned Segal.
One in all Musk’s final public messages to Agrawal got here within the type of a tweet of a poop emoji in response to the Twitter CEO’s protection of how the corporate accounts for spam bots.
(Reporting by Daybreak Chmielewski in Los Angeles; modifying by Kenneth Li, Franklin Paul and Chris Reese)
