Come on. No way Microsoft’s team does a deal like that with 0 power or knowledge in a situation like this. That’s ludicrous.
Edit: the only case I can see for MSFT being truly blindsided is as follows. Elon is behind it. Sam and Elon have their breakup. Sam seems to win. They close the deal with MSFT, all is good. But Elon is intimately familiar with the corporate structure and all moves made historically, maybe even has some evidence of wrong-doing. There is probably only 1 person in the valley that could pressure the non profit to oust Sam (and by extension Greg) AND provide the financial/legal/power backing to see it through. It takes a lot money and influence to do this from the outside. That is really the only scenario I could see MSFT truly being blindsided for getting out-maneuvered by a dinky non-profit board.