Elon Musk has tweeted himself into serious trouble.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Tesla’s CEO on Thursday for making “false and misleading” statements to investors. It’s asking a federal judge to prevent Musk from serving as an officer or a director of a public company, among other penalties.

The complaint hinges on a tweet Musk sent on August 7 about taking Tesla private.

“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420,” Musk said. “Funding secured.”

The SEC said he had not actually secured the funding.

“In truth and in fact, Musk had not even discussed, much less confirmed, key deal terms, including price, with any potential funding source,” the SEC said in its complaint.

That tweet, and subsequent tweets from Musk over the next three hours, caused “significant confusion and disruption in the market for Tesla’s stock,” as well as harm to investors, the SEC said. On the day of Musk’s tweet, Tesla’s stock shot up nearly 9%. It has declined substantially since then.

Tesla’s (TSLA) stock dropped more than 11% in after-hours trading Thursday.

“This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed,” Musk said in a statement. “I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

Tesla and its board of directors said in a joint statement that they are “are fully confident in Elon, his integrity, and his leadership of the company.”

“Our focus remains on the continued ramp of Model 3 production and delivering for our customers, shareholders and employees,” the statement said.

Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said at a press conference Thursday that the agency is committed to holding people accountable despite “celebrity status or reputation as a technological innovator.”

The complaint alleged that Musk rounded up the go-private price to $420 per share “because he had recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture” and thought his girlfriend would find it funny. He was dating the musician Grimes.

Musk did not consult with any board members, employees or outside advisers before he sent the tweets, according to the SEC.

“This is serious. This is what you go after insider traders and market manipulators on,” said Charles Whitehead, professor at Cornell Law School. “This is a serious allegation.”

Musk abandoned the plan to take Tesla private less than three weeks after he first tweeted about it. He later said his “funding secured” comment was based on talks with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which he said had urged him to take the company private and offered to increase its investment in Tesla.

The Justice Department is also investigating comments made by Musk, Tesla said last week. The company said it had received a voluntary request for documents and is cooperating. Tesla said it had not been subpoenaed.

Shareholders have also filed lawsuits charging that Musk made the claim to manipulate the stock price.

Musk has brought a string of bad headlines down on himself with erratic behavior. He has fired off tweets late at night and brushed off analysts on corporate earnings calls. He disparaged a man who was working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand, and sparred with journalists and investors he believed were unfair to him. Musk vowed to launch a website called Pravda to critique the media.

— CNNMoney’s Matt Egan and Jackie Wattles contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 27, 2018: 4:18 PM ET

Analysts are telling Tesla investors to brace themselves.

“If you buy or own Tesla stock, be prepared for a wild ride,” Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs told CNNMoney.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk on Thursday for making “false and misleading” statements to investors in an August 7 tweet that said he had secured funding to take Tesla (TSLA) private at $420 a share. The SEC alleges he did not have the funding secured.

Tesla’s stock fell 12% to $270 a share on Friday.

The company’s future is in the “board’s court now and it remains to be seen what will happen next,” wrote Cowen analyst Jeff Osborne in a note. The firm slashed Tesla’s price target to $200 per share.

Tesla needs to raise $2 billion in the fourth quarter to avoid bankruptcy in 2019, Osbourne estimates. That will be more of a challenge with Musk’s future in doubt, Osbourne said.

The firm chided Tesla as a company “that has always over promised and under delivered.”

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson said that Tesla’s stock has a $130 “Musk premium,” which could disappear if he leaves. If a judge forces Musk to step aside, investors will “focus back on the value of Tesla as a niche automaker, rather than a founder-led likely disrupter of multiple industries,” Johnson wrote in a note aptly titled “Lawsuit Secured” to clients.

Citigroup downgraded Tesla’s stock to a “sell” rating. It slashed Tesla’s price target to $225.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 28, 2018: 9:48 AM ET

BlackBerry’s transformation from struggling smartphone company into a burgeoning leader in cybersecurity software and connected cars is on track.

The company now generates more than 90% of its total revenue from software and services. And 81% of those sales are recurring. In other words, BlackBerry is no longer subject to the fickle tastes of consumers and has hitched its wagon to corporate customers.

BlackBerry (BB) reported profits and sales Friday morning for its latest quarter that topped Wall Street’s forecasts. The stock was up more than 15% in late morning trading on the news.

CEO John Chen, speaking to CNN Friday, said the company’s biggest successes this quarter were in the connected and autonomous car market, with revenue growth of about 30% for the business unit that includes the QNX software business for cars.

Chen said BlackBerry is working hard to win more customers in the automotive market, pointing to a deal it announced in January with Chinese search engine giant Baidu (BIDU) to jointly develop self-driving cars.

The company, under Chen, realized a few years ago that it was a losing battle making devices that generated razor-thin profit margins at a time when Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (SSNLF) dominate the smartphone race.

That’s why BlackBerry decided in 2016 to stop making its own phones and outsource the production of devices with the BlackBerry name on them to other manufacturers.

Since then, BlackBerry has gone all-in on software.

BlackBerry hoping for a new ‘Spark’

So what’s next? Chen said he’s hopeful that BlackBerry’s new Spark security platform, which is kind of like instant messaging on steroids, can make a bigger presence in the health care market. Spark integrates video chat, texts and other forms of media.

BlackBerry is targeting health to help the company expand beyond its core markets of transportation, governments and financial services companies.

Investors are pleased with the turnaround too. BlackBerry’s stock is up more than 60% since Chen took over nearly five years ago. That’s solid, but it has lagged the performance of Apple as well as the Nasdaq.

Still, Chen has cleaned up BlackBerry’s balance sheet. The company now has $2.4 billion in cash and just $740 million in long-term debt. Rumors about BlackBerry going out of business are no longer running rampant the way they were before Chen joined.

BlackBerry’s board is happy with Chen’s leadership as well. BlackBerry announced in March that it was extending Chen’s contract through November 2023.

That may also put to rest some of the rumors that Chen was only going to stick around long enough to sell BlackBerry to a larger rival.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 28, 2018: 10:41 AM ET

Can Tesla navigate through its many controversies and still meet its sales targets? We’re about to find out.

Early next week Tesla will report how many cars it made in the third quarter and how many it was actually able to deliver to customers.

Three months ago, investors and Tesla fans waited to see if the company could hit its long-promised target of building 5,000 Model 3 cars in a week. It just made that goal, building 5,031 in the last week of June.

Experts say the report on third quarter production is much more important to the company and its future. It’ll show whether the production level at the end of the second quarter was a blip or sustainable.

“The idea of having sustained production is so much more important than a production sprint during a week,” said Jeremy Acevedo manager of industry analysis at Edmunds. “The difference between 5,000 a week and 20,000 a month is huge.”

And even more importantly it’ll show whether Tesla (TSLA) is on track to meet CEO Elon Musk’s promises that the company would be profitable in the third and fourth quarters. The company had only two marginally profitable quarters in its history as a public company, and posted its largest loss ever in the second quarter as it rushed to ramp up production.

The losses, and more than $1 billion in debt that will be come due at Tesla by next spring, are why some experts are raising the possibility of a cash crunch at Tesla that could force it to sell more shares to raise cash. That could be more difficult as the stock loses value and Musk faces a federal lawsuit for misleading investors.

Musk has insisted that the company will not need to raise cash because it will generate more revenue with increased production. But he also has admitted that the company is having trouble delivering all the cars it is building.

“Sorry, we’ve gone from production hell to delivery logistics hell,” Musk tweeted two weeks ago, though he promised, “We’re making rapid progress. Should be solved shortly.”

Needless to say, its customers who are waiting for their Teslas aren’t paying for their long-anticipated cars until they actually get delivered. So the logistics problems could be its own red flag for the company revenue.

“The delivery scramble and chaos they’re going through right now, it’s disconcerting,” said Rebecca Lindland, analyst with Cox Automotive.

She said that while some fans of Tesla might want to focus on whatever production number is reported, it’s important to look at both production and deliveries.

Tesla’s most consequential report in its history has been overshadowed with controversy.

In August Musk announced via tweet that he was planning to take the company private at a price of $420 a share, and that he had “funding secured” to do so. Although he had some investors expressing interest in financing such a deal, there was nothing secured, according to the SEC. He dropped plans to go private by the end of the month. But by then he had already been sued by shareholders who charged that the tweet was a deceptive effort to manipulate the stock price. And Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a suit against Musk, seeking to have him removed as an officer at Tesla or any other public company.

Add in stories about Musk not getting any sleep and smoking pot during a podcast, and his other company SpaceX selling a trip to the moon for a billionaire tourist on his other company SpaceX, and its easy to forget that a good measure of success is actually how many cars you can build and sell.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 28, 2018: 3:47 PM ET

An attack on Facebook exposed information on nearly 50 million of the social network’s users, the company announced Friday — and gave the attackers access to those users’ accounts with other sites and apps that they logged into using Facebook.

The attackers exploited a bug in a feature called “View as” that lets users see their Facebook page the way someone else would. The attackers were able to take over the accounts and use them exactly as if they were the account holders. That would include posting or viewing information shared by any of that account’s friends. Facebook says no credit card information stored with the company was accessed.

Facebook (FB) said it does not know who the attackers were or where they were based. It also said it has already fixed the issue and informed the FBI and other law enforcement, as well as lawmakers and regulators. It has also informed the Irish Data Protection Commission about the breach, a step required by Europe’s GDPR regulations. The commission said it received the notification, but expressed concern with its timing and lack of detail.

More than 90 million users were forcibly logged out of their accounts by Facebook and had to log back in on Friday for security reasons. The accounts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg were among the 90 million accounts forcibly logged out by Facebook.

Users do not need to take any additional security precautions or reset their passwords, said Facebook. All logged out users will receive a notification about the issue from Facebook, but it won’t tell them if they were in the group of 50 million impacted or 40 million included as a precaution.

The attackers would have also been able to access third-party services or sites accessed with a Facebook login, Facebook’s Guy Rosen said in a follow-up call with reporters on Friday, though it is not yet clear if they did so. It could have also impacted Instagram accounts that use the same login as Facebook, but Rosen said WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook, was not impacted. It’s the largest hack ever for Facebook, a spokesperson said.

The company says it does not know if the affected accounts were misused in any way or if any user information was actually accessed. It has not determined if any specific locations or accounts were targeted. It has turned off the “View As” feature that the attackers exploited while it investigates.

“From experience, breach notifications like this always tend to get worse as time goes on and information from investigations is shared with the public,” said Jessy Irwin, the head of security at cybersecurity firm Tendermint. “There’s not much that is public about how those [linked] accounts are impacted, but this seems to go much deeper into Facebook’s entire ecosystem than Cambridge Analytica did.”

Facebook says the vulnerability is the result of three distinct bugs, and originally appeared in July 2017 when the company made a change to a video uploading feature. The company first detected some unusual activity — a spike in user access to the site — on September 16, 2018. It launched an investigation and uncovered this attack on Tuesday, September 25. On Wednesday it notified law enforcement and on Thursday evening it fixed the vulnerability and began resetting login tokens, according to Facebook.

The attackers stole Facebook “access tokens” which keep a person logged into their Facebook account over long periods of time so they don’t have to keep signing in. Facebook reset all 50 million tokens, as well as tokens for an additional 40 million people who had used the “View as” feature in the past year as a “precautionary step.” The reset also unlinked accounts like Instagram and Oculus, both of which are owned by Facebook, which users will need to relink.

“The reality here is we face constant attacks from people who want to take over accounts or steal information…. we need to do more to prevent this from happening in the first place,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a call with reporters shortly after the announcement.

The announcement is the latest issue for the company, which has struggled with security breaches, privacy issues and misinformation in recent years. Facebook says it is investing heavily in security going forward, and increasing the number of people working on security from 10,000 to 20,000.

“Security is an arms race and we’re continuing to improve our defenses,” said Zuckerberg.

— CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Laurie Segall and Sara O’Brien contributed reporting.

CNNMoney (San Francisco) First published September 28, 2018: 12:58 PM ET

Elon Musk agreed Saturday to step down as chairman of Tesla and pay a $20 million fine in a deal to settle charges brought this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under the settlement, which requires court approval, Musk will be allowed to stay as CEO but must leave his role as chairman of the board within 45 days. He cannot seek reelection for three years, according to court filings.

He accepted the deal with the SEC “without admitting or denying the allegations of the complaint,” according to a court document.

Separately, Tesla agreed Saturday to pay $20 million to settle claims it failed to adequately police Musk’s tweet.

“The $40 million in penalties will be distributed to harmed investors under a court-approved process,” the SEC said in a press release.

The company also agreed to appoint two new independent directors to its board and establish a board committee to oversee Musk’s communications.

Tesla declined to comment. A spokesperson confirmed Musk will be permitted to remain a member of the board.

The announcement from the SEC comes two days after the agency filed a lawsuit against Musk, claiming he misled investors. The suit centers on tweets Musk sent on August 7 in which he said he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, causing the company’s stock to soar. He had not secured the funding, the SEC said.

The lawsuit sought to ban Musk from serving as an officer or director of any publicly traded company.

Musk called the SEC’s suit “unjustified.”

“I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors,” he said. “Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

CNBC, citing unnamed sources, reported that the agency filed the suit on Thursday after Musk refused an earlier settlement offer. Under that deal, Musk would have had to pay a “nominal fine” and leave his role as chairman for two years. He chose not to accept the terms because “because he felt that by settling he would not be truthful to himself,” according to the outlet.

A representative for Musk did not immediately reply to CNN’s request for comment Saturday.

Jay Dubow, a partner at Pepper Hamilton and a veteran of the SEC’s enforcement division, said it was “unusual” that the SEC agreed to let Musk stay on as chief executive but exit the chairman role.

It’s surprising considering “the conduct at issue, if [the SEC] really thought it was egregious,” Dubow said. “The CEO is certainly more involved than the chairman in day-to-day operations.”

He suggested the SEC may have determined that removing Musk as CEO would cause more harm to Tesla’s share price, and thus harm investors.

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson estimated in a recent note that Tesla’s stock has a $130 “Musk premium,” which could disappear if he leaves.

Still unclear is whether or not the Department of Justice will file criminal charges against Musk.

Tesla confirmed earlier this month that the DOJ was investigating whether Musk’s comments about taking his company private constituted criminal activity.

Dubow, the former SEC official, said he suspects nothing will come of it.

“My guess is that it’s still possible the DOJ will pursue something, but…it’s more likely than not that the DOJ chooses not to pursue this,” he said.

The settlement has likely assuaged the SEC, mitigating the DOJ’s incentive to act.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 29, 2018: 5:46 PM ET

New York
CNN Business
 — 

Instagram has a new leader.

On Monday, the company announced that Adam Mosseri will head Instagram effective immediately. Last week, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they would leave the company.

“We are thrilled to hand over the reins to a product leader with a strong design background and a focus on craft and simplicity — as well as a deep understanding of the importance of community,” Systrom and Krieger said in a statement.

Mosseri – who joined Facebook, which owns Instagram, in 2008 – has held various roles at the company, including head of News Feed and design director for Facebook’s mobile apps. Most recently, he was Instagram’s VP of product. In his new role, Mosseri will oversee “all functions of the business” and will hire a new executive team, including a head of engineering, product and operations.

Before their departures, Systrom was CEO and Krieger was the chief technology officer.

The duo founded the photo-sharing app in a co-working space in 2010. It became a big hit, attracting tens of millions of users before the co-founders sold it to Facebook (FB) in 2012 for $1 billion.

With Facebook’s backing, Instagram continued to grow and added new features like videos, disappearing posts and, most recently, a hub for long-form content called IGTV. According to Instagram, the app now has over 1 billion monthly active users.

While it’s not uncommon for founders to leave after their company is acquired, it’s notable that Systrom and Krieger stayed on for six years after Facebook acquired their company.

It’s unclear what the two will do next. In a statement last week, Systrom said: “We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again … Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.”

Systrom and Krieger’s exodus come less than six months after Jan Koum stepped down as CEO of messaging platform WhatsApp, which Facebook purchased in 2014 for $19 billion.

Brian Acton, the other WhatsApp founder, left Facebook in 2017. He backed calls earlier this year for people to delete Facebook amid revelations that Cambridge Analytica accessed millions of users’ data without their knowledge.

New York
CNN Business
 — 

A massive Facebook breach may also have affected users of hundreds of other websites and apps. But three days after the public disclosure of the breach, it’s not clear that those companies know what, if anything, might have happened to their users.

A spokesperson for the dating app Tinder said Monday that Facebook has shared only “limited information” and called on Facebook to be “transparent” about which of Tinder’s users may have been affected.

In a statement Monday, Facebook said it was preparing more guidance for app developers.

A wide range of digital services, including big names like Tinder, Spotify and Airbnb, allow users to log in to accounts on their platforms using their Facebook credentials, a process known as Single Sign-On, or SSO.

The breach, which Facebook has said affected 50 million of its users, would have allowed hackers to log in as those people on Facebook and on apps and websites that allow SSO though Facebook.

CNN reached out to almost a dozen companies that offer the Facebook login capability. None of them would say if they had identified any overlap between their users who log in using Facebook and the 50 million Facebook users whose data was exposed.

Identifying that overlap could allow the companies to examine if affected Facebook users’ data was also compromised on their platforms.

Jason Polakis, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that single sign-on is a useful feature, but also a very risky one.

“The importance here is that since Facebook has become the most popular identity provider out there it’s not easy to evaluate how many accounts of yours hackers might have accessed,” said Polakis, who has studied the feature extensively.

In a statement to CNN on Monday, Tinder said it has done “a full forensic investigation” since Facebook’s “limited” disclosure and has found “no evidence to suggest accounts have been accessed.”

Tinder continued, “We will continue to investigate and be vigilant — as we always are — and if Facebook would be transparent and share the affected user lists, it would be very helpful in our investigation.”

A Tinder spokesperson pointed out that most of its new users sign up to the service without using a Facebook login.

Pinterest, another company that allows its users to log in using Facebook, told CNN that it was working with Facebook to determine if any Pinterest users were impacted.

Facebook said in a statement Monday that developers of apps that use Facebook login “can detect the forced logout actions we took on Friday and protect people using their apps.”

“We are preparing additional recommendations for all developers responding to this incident and to protect people going forward,” a Facebook spokesperson added.

Airbnb and GoFundMe, two major services that allow users to log in through Facebook, did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Spotify told CNN it takes the security of its users’ privacy very seriously.

The company added that “as a precaution, concerned users can update their Spotify password, or if the account was created through Facebook, the Facebook login via their instructions.”

The precautionary advisory comes after Facebook told users that they didn’t need to change their passwords because the hackers did not have access to passwords.

No company that CNN reached out to explained what practical steps they were taking to ensure their users had not been affected by the attack on Facebook.

Headspace, a meditation and wellness app, told CNN, “We’ve investigated the matter and found no abnormalities, though we have initiated precautionary measures to protect our members and are continuing to monitor.”

The company did not detail what its investigation entailed nor what precautionary measures it took.

Other apps allow their users to log in through Facebook but have additional security measures on top of that login.

A spokesperson for Ancestry told CNN, “While Ancestry does support Facebook login for some functions, we always require an additional Ancestry username and password to access sensitive account functions such as downloading your DNA data, changing your password, changing your email address or accessing payment information. Our customers’ exposure is minimized by these additional controls.”

TransferWise, a money wire service that allows users to log in through Facebook, said its investigation was underway but that it had “no indication” that its customers had been affected.

The company said that in order for any money to be transferred users are asked to verify their identity through a second step that does not involve Facebook.

CNN
 — 

Uber has a new head of human resources. Her hire comes nearly three months after the controversial exit of the previous HR chief.

Nikki Krishnamurthy will replace Liane Hornsey, who left Uber in early July after an internal investigation into how she handled racial discrimination claims within the company, the company announced on Tuesday.

Krishnamurthy comes from Expedia where she served as its chief people officer. She worked with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Before joining Uber last August, Khosrowshahi spent a decade leading Expedia.

In a statement, Khosrowshahi called Krishnamurthy a “trusted partner” who will help “evolve our culture.”

The move marks another key hire under Khosrowshahi, who has been tasked with cleaning up the company’s corporate culture.

Uber has faced with a string of scandals, including widespread allegations of gender and sexual harassment that led to co-founder Travis Kalanick’s resignation as CEO in June 2017.

Krishnamurthy, whose title is chief people officer, will oversee Uber’s human resources, recruiting, workplace, and diversity and inclusion teams. She starts on October 8.

CNN
 — 

A rare spot of happy news: Apple is finally getting a llama emoji. And a raccoon, bagel, frisbee and mosquito emoji, too.

The company said it will likely add 70 new emoji for iPhone and iPad users later this month. Beta testers and developers who update to iOS 12.1 will see the new emoji starting Tuesday.

Beyond the new cute (and bloodsucking) animals, iOS 12.1 users will now be able to send a bagel, salt, luggage, compass, hiking boot, softball, frisbee, and an Asian-inspired Red Gift Envelope to friends and family.

On World Emoji Day in July, Apple previewed new options for bald and redheaded emoji characters, as well a lobster, cupcake and superheroes. These emoji will also roll out to iOS 12.1.

The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that manages the world’s emoji standards, unveiled its latest list in February. Each company that uses emoji in their products puts their own spin on the tiny cartoons and picks which options from the master list to include.

The interpretations can lead to controversy, such as Google’s misplacement of foam on its beer emoji, and the tragic jumbling of ingredients on its hamburger emoji. Both have since been corrected.