Musk promotes new perfume Burnt Hair at  $100 per unit

Elon Musk has launched a fragrance named 'Burnt Hair'.

Elon Musk is promoting a new perfume, as the world’s richest man continues a track record of turning what ostensibly start out as jokes into sought-after products.

Mr Musk announced the scent — called “Burnt Hair” and described as “the essence of repugnant desire” — in a tweet on Tuesday, before changing his Twitter biography to “Perfume Salesman”.

A separate product page posted by Boring, Mr Musk’s tunneling company, listed the fragrance at $100 (€103) a pop, and Mr Musk later tweeted that 10,000 bottles had been sold.

The billionaire had said in an earlier post in September that Boring would launch a scent for men that will help them “stand out in a crowd”. He wrote on Tuesday that getting into the fragrance business was inevitable given his last name, tweeting in jest: “Why did I even fight it for so long!?” 

History of joke products

The Tesla chief executive officer has a history of launching products based on jokes that his massive fanbase has sought after as collectibles. 

A limited line of 20,000 flamethrowers sold by Boring in 2018 to raise $10m for its tunnel-building tests attracted huge interest. 

He has also used items to mock investors betting against the electric-vehicle maker, including a Tesla Tequila based on an April’s Fools’ Day gag and a pair of satin short shorts, to mark a victory over short sellers.

Mr Musk has said that Boring plans to make a functional so-called Hyperloop in the coming years — a tunnel-based, high-speed transportation system — although significant hurdles remain, including securing permits for projects and passing environmental studies.

Twitter lawsuit

Meanwhile, Mr Musk got a judge to throw out most of a Twitter shareholder’s lawsuit over his effort to cancel his $44bn buyout of the company, already the subject of a high-profile legal battle.

A Delaware chancery judge dismissed the bulk of the suit which targets Mr Musk’s “lame rationales for reneging on his contract”. 

A trial over Twitter’s own lawsuit to make Mr Musk consummate the buyout, which was due to start in Wilmington next week, is on hold as the social media company weighs a last-minute effort by Mr Musk to renew the deal. 

In the shareholder suit, the investor, Luigi Crispo, hasn’t “adequately alleged third-party beneficiary standing to specifically enforce the merger agreement,” the judge said.

She also tossed an allegation of breach of fiduciary duties. Because Crispo couldn’t show that Musk was Twitter’s controlling shareholder, he couldn’t make a legitimate claim that the billionaire had violated legal duties to other Twitter investors, she found.

That leaves arguments about whether Crispo has legal standing to bring breach-of-contract claims over the teetering merger. The judge let that part of the case proceed, pending further briefing. 

Bloomberg