Tesla CEO Elon Musk avoided discussing the collapsed Twitter deal as he addressed an audience of moguls on Saturday in an annual gathering of media and technology executives in Idaho, U.S., two sources who attended the conference told Reuters.

In a wide-reaching interview, Musk spent most of his time talking about colonizing Mars and extolling the virtues of boosting birth rates on Earth, said the sources. Musk, who is also the chief executive of SpaceX, has long advocated establishing a civilization on the red planet.

The billionaire entrepreneur took the stage at at the gathering, known as Allen & Co Sun Valley Conference, less than 24 hours after he announced he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.

Hours later, Musk's attorneys delivered an eight-page letter to Twitter, saying he planned to call off the deal to acquire the social network. The document, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleged Twitter failed to respond to repeated requests for information over the past two months, or obtain his consent before taking actions that would impact its business, such as firing two key executives.

Following Musk's announcement, one chief executive noted the elephant in the room, Saturday's remarks might well be uncomfortable to two conference attendees: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal.

One of Musk's last public messages to Agrawal came in the form of a tweet of a poop emoji in response to the Twitter CEO's defense of how the company accounts for spam bots.

(Cover photo via CFP)

(With inputs from Reuters)