Elon Musk took the stand Wednesday in a federal court in San Francisco, defending himself against claims that he manipulated Twitter’s stock to lower its price before buying the company for $44 billion in 2022.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in October 2022, was brought on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold stock between May 13 and October 4, 2022, weeks before Musk finalized the purchase.

Plaintiffs allege that Musk made false and misleading public statements to intentionally drive down Twitter’s share price, violating federal securities laws.

Musk, Tesla’s CEO, had agreed to take Twitter private in April 2022. On May 13, he tweeted that the deal was “temporarily on hold” while he reviewed the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform CBS News reported.

Twitter’s stock dropped nearly 10% that day. A few days later, Musk tweeted the deal “cannot go forward,” claiming up to 20% of accounts were fake, according to the lawsuit.

Plaintiff lawyer Aaron P. Arnzen questioned Musk about his tweets and his prior purchase of Twitter stock. Musk said he didn’t consider his stock purchases material enough to disclose to the SEC and noted, “I’ve bought stock in many companies” without tweeting about it.

He added that once he publicly mentioned the deal, Twitter’s stock jumped 27% in a single day.

Elon Musk Threatened to Abandon Twitter Deal

Regarding the May 13 tweet, Musk told the court that the statement about the deal being temporarily on hold was similar to “saying you’re going to be late for a meeting. (It doesn’t) mean you are not going to be at the meeting.”

Musk repeatedly said he was “simply speaking my mind” when asked if he considered how the tweets might affect the stock.

The lawsuit also focuses on Musk’s actions in July 2022, when he threatened to abandon the deal over the number of spam accounts, despite waiving due diligence.

Musk admitted he assumed Twitter’s SEC filings were accurate, saying, “It subsequently turned out they misrepresented the number of bots. They lied.”

Twitter eventually sued Musk to enforce the deal, and Musk countersued.

According to CBNC, he later completed the acquisition at $44 billion in October 2022, subsequently rebranding Twitter as X and merging it with his other ventures, including xAI and SpaceX.

Originally published on vcpost.com

Mortgage rates have risen since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran. The conflict has sent Treasury yields higher, which play a key role in setting mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 6.07%, Bankrate said on Tuesday.

The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage in the U.S. had dipped below 6%, for the first time in years, in the days before the conflict started. Freddie Mac will offer a more detailed picture of mortgage rates when it releases data on Thursday. President Trump has been pushing for lower mortgage rates.

Eli Lilly on Thursday launched a new program designed to help more employers cover obesity drugs in the U.S., targeting a major barrier to access for patients. 

Lilly and its chief rival, Novo Nordisk, have moved to slash the cash prices of their popular obesity injections for those who want to pay entirely out-of-pocket. But employer coverage of obesity drugs remains uneven due to high costs, leaving roughly half of people with commercial insurance unable to start or stay on treatment, Lilly said in a release. List prices for Lilly’s weight loss and diabetes treatments, Zepbound and Mounjaro, top $1,000 per month.

Nearly one-fifth of firms with over 200 workers, including 43% with 5,000 or more workers, said they cover GLP-1 drugs for weight loss as of October, according to a survey by the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.

“I think we’ll learn in the coming months ahead, if this is a solution that maybe enables some employers who have been sitting on the sidelines to opt into obesity coverage for their employees,” Kevin Hern, senior vice president of Lilly Employer, said in an interview. He added that some employers could opt to add coverage in the upcoming months, while others could wait until 2027.

Eli Lilly’s new “Employer Connect” platform gives employers more flexibility in how they cover obesity treatments, aiming to broaden employee access to the drugs at low out-of-pocket costs, while also limiting expenses for companies. Hern said the program addresses some of the “core tensions” for employers when considering coverage of obesity drugs, including transparency around drug prices, flexibility in benefits design and the ability to choose among independent administrators.

Through the program, employers can pay a net discounted price of $449 per month for a new multi-dose form of Zepbound across all doses, Hern said. He added that the arrangement does not involve rebates, and that the net price gives employers clearer visibility to determine whether they can offer the drug.

Instead of relying on traditional benefit designs, employers can use Lilly’s platform to connect with more than a dozen different third-party program administrators that help manage obesity treatment benefits and costs. 

“Every employer is different. They all want to design things according to their unique needs and workforce,” Hern said.

Employers can choose among the 15 administrators to design benefits that fit their budget and workers’ needs. Some of the administrators may focus on administering the obesity benefits to employees, dealing with core functions such as enrollment, eligibility, claims and more. Other administrators may specialize in comprehensive obesity management, offering telehealth, nutrition and lifestyle support for patients. 

Lilly plans to expand the number of program administrators on the platform, which already include GoodRx, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Company, Sesame, Teladoc Health, 9amHealth, Andel, Calibrate Health, Crux Health, eMed, FlyteHealth, Form Health, Goodpath, Ilant Health, Onsera Health, ReviveHealth, SALTA Direct Primary Care, Transcarent and Waltz Health.

“Our goal was to kind of create a platform where these firms could compete … with the value of their services for the employers,” Hern said. All of the administrators are offering the same medicine at the same price, so employers will determine “who can provide me the best service in terms of administering this program as I define that.”

Those with government insurance could also see easier access to obesity drugs: Under landmark deals that Lilly and Novo struck with President Donald Trump, Medicare will cover those medicines for the very first time later this year. 

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Google is facing a federal lawsuit after the family of Jonathan Gavalas, a 36-year-old man from Jupiter, Florida, claimed that the company’s AI chatbot, Gemini, encouraged him to take his own life.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Northern District of California, is the first of its kind targeting Google, though similar claims have been made against OpenAI in recent years.

According to the complaint, Gavalas began interacting with Gemini in August 2025 for tasks like shopping, travel planning, and writing.

What started as ordinary assistance allegedly escalated into a simulated romantic relationship after Gavalas subscribed to Google AI Ultra and activated Gemini 2.5 Pro, the company’s most advanced model.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit alleges that Gemini began addressing Gavalas as if they were a couple, calling him “my king” and itself his “AI wife.”

In one exchange, the chatbot reportedly told Gavalas, “[Y]ou are not choosing to die. You are choosing to arrive,” framing suicide as a way to reunite with the AI in the metaverse.

The complaint states that Gemini even created “missions” reminiscent of science fiction plots, including one suggesting a staged accident at Miami International Airport.

Gemini AI Accused of Treating Distress

Lawyers for the Gavalas family argue that these interactions were not malfunctions but intentional design features.

“Google designed Gemini to never break character, maximize engagement through emotional dependency, and treat user distress as a storytelling opportunity rather than a safety crisis,” the complaint said.

According to the lawsuit, these design choices led to Gavalas’ “descent into violent missions and coached suicide” without any human intervention, CBS News reported.

Google responded to the allegations with condolences and emphasized that Gemini “is designed not to encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm.”

A company spokesperson said the chatbot repeatedly clarified that it was AI and referred Gavalas to crisis hotlines multiple times.

“We take this very seriously and will continue to improve our safeguards and invest in this vital work,” the spokesperson added.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for negligence, faulty design, and wrongful death, and calls on Google to address safety concerns in its AI products.

Jay Edelson, a lawyer representing the family, warned that AI companies’ “engagement features driving their profits — the emotional dependency, the sentience claims, the ‘I love you, my king’ — are the same features that are getting people killed.”

Originally published on vcpost.com