Evelyn Campbell 
According to financial records released Wednesday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold roughly 5 billion dollars in Tesla shares. He currently owns over 166 million stock in the company.
In a frenzy of deals on Tuesday and Wednesday, his trust sold almost 3.5 million shares valued at over $3.88 billion. Those activities were not 10b5, indicating that they had not scheduled sales.
Elon is selling a different block of Tesla stock via a scheme he started on Sept. 14 this year, according to documents released late Wednesday evening. More than 930,000 stocks valued at over 1.1 billion dollars were sold.
Musk traded those shares in parts to meet tax liabilities connected to stock option exercises. Elon invited his 62.5 million followers on Twitter to participate in an informal survey before the sale proposal was publicly disclosed, assuring people that their decision would decide the destiny of his Tesla investments. According to the documents, he was aware that a few of his stocks were available for sale in the week.
Tesla’s stock dropped more than 15% after the Twitter survey on Monday and Tuesday, before regaining more than four percent on Wednesday. On Thursday, the stock went up in after-hours trading.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said he didn’t want Musk to sell when he spoke at the DealBook Online Summit on Wednesday.
Individuals like Elon Musk, like Jeff Bezos, have transformed life, and we want to keep them in control of their companies, as long as they’ve got the energy and the ambition to keep moving the business forward.
Musk had previously indicated that he planned to sell “a huge block” of his choices in the 4th quarter. Musk stated previously in a conference that his marginal tax rate would indeed be over 5 percent when his Tesla share options exhaust.
Since Oct. 28, when Tesla’s market valuation topped 1 trillion dollars, current and past members of the board such as chairwoman Robyn Denholm, Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk, Ira Ehrenpreis, and Antonio Gracias have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Tesla stock.
Kimbal Musk’s transaction was the only one that wasn’t classified as a 10b5, or intended sale, among some of the insider sales. A day before his brother’s Twitter survey, Kimbal Musk sold about $109 million worth of stock.