Elon Musk sold 7.9 million shares of Tesla last week raising $6.9 billion, according to a series of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed Tuesday night.
This was Musk’s first Tesla sale since April, when he sold 9.6 million shares raising $8.5 billion after announcing he was willing to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
After weeks of speculation the deal was called off after the Tesla CEO said the social media company failed to disclose reliable data on how many user accounts were bots and spam accounts.
Twitter sued to force Musk to go ahead in a case that analysts said was facing a lasting legal battle.
In Tuesday’s filings, Musk did not disclose the reason for the stock sales. However, after being asked on Twitter about it, he pointed to the possibility of being forced to buy Twitter as the reason.
“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 his tweet.
Musk still owns 155 million shares of Tesla and has control over about 20% of the Tesla outstanding shares.
