He kinda responded to it in a forum post. One paragraph about "improving processes and communication".

The rest was him doubling down on everything.

He literally said that they auctioned the billet block and didn't sell it. Like.. what?! Are we playing semantics here?

And he again emphasised that they didn't want to "waste" the money to test the billet block properly, and he actually said that he didn't want anyone to buy the billet block. In these exact words.