--- title: "Elon Musk Just Sold $5 Billion of His Tesla Stock" description: "According to new financial filings, Elon Musk appears to have unloaded approximately $5 billion worth of his stock in Tesla." date: "2021-11-10" modified: "2021-11-11" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-sells-stock" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "Tesla" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "tesla" - "the digest" --- # Elon Musk Just Sold $5 Billion of His Tesla Stock ![According to new financial filings, Elon Musk appears to have unloaded approximately $1.1 billion worth of his stock in Tesla.]() *LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 03: Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. leaves the US District Court, Central District of California through a back door in Los Angeles, U.S. on December 3, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. The defamation lawsuit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk began in Los Angeles over calling British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth "'Pedo Guy" and rapist. Unsworth was one of the first cave divers to reach the trapped boys in the flooded Tham Luong caves in Thailand. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images) \Image: Getty\* ## Sell! Sell! This past weekend, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk [polled his Twitter followers]() on whether he should sell ten percent of his Tesla stock. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10 percent of my Tesla stock,” the billionaire [tweeted]() at the time. “Do you support this?” Ultimately, 57 percent of respondents said that he should — and now, according to [new financial]() [filings](), he appears to have started, by unloading approximately $5 billion worth of the holdings. ## Mega Swell The drama all comes after an enormous upswell in Tesla's stock price, which just recently exceeded a trillion dollars in value. Of course, $5 billion is nowhere near ten percent of Musk's Tesla stock. To make good on his promise, he'd need to unload around $20 billion. Musk's claim that the sale was a way to pay taxes has come under some scrutiny, with [critics pointing out]() that he'd owe heavy taxes on the stock if he *didn't* sell, thanks to the structure of his stock options. The question that'll be pressing most heavily on Tesla investors, though, is how it's going to affect the electric carmaker's stock price for everybody else. *Story updated to reflect that Musk had sold even more stock than was initially clear.* **More on Musk:** [*Elon Musk Says He Wants to Start a University With a Dirty Name*]() ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()