Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk confirmed that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has no private shares in Twitter’s stock. On Wednesday morning, he denied a report that SBF owned a $100 million stake. Although he denied the reports early Wednesday morning, he provided additional details later in the day.
When NBC’s David Ingram asked if SBF or his company, FTX owned Twitter shares, Elon Musk said, “No. He may have owned shares in Twitter as a public company, but he certainly does not own shares in Twitter as a private company.”
Despite Elon Musk’s statement, many in the media are still convinced that Elon Musk took money from SBF. “Of course, Elon took the $ and then dunked on SBF, because it is all a game that you all aren’t supposed to see: Sam Bankman-Fried, Eon and a secret text | Semafor,” Kara Swisher tweeted.
The article shared by Swisher claims that Elon Musk sent SBF a text inviting him to “roll the $100 million stake he had owned for a few months into a privately held Twitter.”
Semafor said that it confirmed the to spoke on the phone, and SBFopted not to invest $5 billion or even an amount up to $10 billion. However, it claimed that SBF contributed his $100 million in stock toward Twitter, which is now private.
Elon Musk responded to Semafor’s article stating that it was a lie. “As I said, neither I nor Twitter have taken any investment from SBF/FTX. Your article is a lie. Now, I’m asking again, how much of you does SBF own?”
In his initial response to the publication, Elon Musk called out Semafor’s conflict of interest in its reporting, which paints Elon Musk in a worse light than SBF.
In November, Teddy Schleifer, a journalist with Puck News, pointed out that there was a question of whether SBF would be able to continue funding the media. Grants, he pointed out, have gone to several publications, including Semafor. Schleifer included a tweet by Semefor’s own Max Tani, who reported that the grants from SBF’s foundation to ProPublica were on hold.
Schleifer noted that Vox, The Intercept, The Law and Justice Journalism Project, and ProPublica were also funded by SBF. Elon Musk has also called into question the coverage of SBF by the mainstream media.
