Elon Musk Sells Tesla shares Worth $7bn

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, sold $6.9bn worth of Tesla shares, his biggest sale on record, saying he needs cash in case he loses a legal battle with Twitter and is forced to buy the social media platform.

Elon Musk pulled out of the deal with Twitter in July, provoking a lawsuit from the social platform. A trial will take place in Delaware in October.

In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,

Musk said in a tweet.

The sale comes only four months after Musk said he had no further plans to sell Tesla shares after disposing of $8.5bn of stock in the wake of his initial offer to buy Twitter. Since then, Tesla’s shares have rebounded from lows reached in May, benefiting from broader gains in US equities.

In the comments to his latest post, Musk confirmed that he finished selling Tesla stock and would buy it back if the Twitter deal does not close.