Stanford University was subpoenaed by famous dropout Elon Musk as part of his legal fight with Twitter Inc over his plan to walk away from a $44 billion takeover offer.
Lawyers for Musk want all records of all “conversations, conferences, discussions, interviews, meetings, negotiations and agreements” between Twitter and Stanford as well as anyone related to the university about the proposed deal, according to a subpoena issued Wednesday in Delaware.
At the age of 24, Musk started a doctoral program in physics at Stanford in 1995 but dropped out after two days. Earlier this month, the Tesla Inc founder tweeted about a letter he received from a Stanford professor telling him about the cutting-edge research he missed out on.
It’s not clear what connection Musk thinks Stanford has to the deal, but the university has links to much of what goes on in Silicon Valley. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has a Stanford PhD in computer science, and Fei Fei Li, a computer science professor at the university, serves on the company’s board. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were also Stanford computer science grad students.
Both sides have issued a spate of subpoenas to banks, investors and lawyers involved in the deal as they seek ammunition for an Oct. 17 trial before Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick. Musk cancelled the buyout citing Twitter’s failure to hand over information about spam and robot accounts embedded in their customer base. Twitter counters it made robust disclosures about the bots issue and Musk’s concerns are a flawed pretext for nixing the deal.
Bloomberg News reported earlier Wednesday Musk will seek to push the trial back to December after the emergence of a Twitter whistle-blower, who says his concerns about bot accounts were ignored. Former Twitter security head Peiter Zatko also raised concerns about user privacy in a complaint sent to regulators and Congress last week.
The case is Twitter v. Musk, 22-0613, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington).
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