--- title: "Elon Musk Quietly Unloads Billions in Tesla Shares as Price Plummets" description: "Elon Musk has once again sold an insanely large amount of Tesla stock post-Twitter purchase — even as the EV maker's stock value continues to go down." date: "2022-12-15" modified: "2022-12-15" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-unloads-billions-tesla-stock" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "Tesla" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "tesla" - "the digest" - "twitter" --- # Elon Musk Quietly Unloads Billions in Tesla Shares as Price Plummets ![Elon Musk has once again sold an insanely large amount of Tesla stock post-Twitter purchase — even as the EV maker's stock value continues to go down.]() *\Image: SOPA via Getty / Futurism\* ## Stonk Wonk Elon Musk has once again sold a mindboggling cache of Tesla stock — even as the electric vehicle maker's stock value continues a [precipitous decline](). As the [*Wall Street Journal* reports](), Musk quietly sold off a whopping 22 million Tesla shares — worth about $3.5 billion — over a three-day period this week, bringing the total amount he's unloaded since April to [just under $23 billion](). At press time, those shares were worth about $157 apiece, which is [28 percent lower]() than it was before he took over ownership of Twitter. To be clear, we can't be sure if this latest sale of his EV company's shares is meant to shore up Twitter's grim financial situation because we, like the *WSJ*, have not received a response to our request for comment from Tesla, which infamously [shuttered its PR department in 2020](). It's not entirely unlikely, though. When purchasing Twitter for a cool $44 billion earlier this fall, Musk saddled the company with an astonishing [$1.2 billion in annual interest payments]() due to the deal structure — which puts the company in a grim position, since it [hasn't actually made a profit since 2019](). ## Nightmare Fuel Meanwhile, Tesla's stock value has plummeted to a [two-year low]() and has halved in value this year alone. Unsurprisingly, some of the EV maker's [investors are mighty ticked off at Musk]() for shifting his focus to his shiny new Twitter toy while the company continues to lose money at such a rapid rate, with hedge fund manager and Tesla stockholder [Gary Black tweeting]() this week that "there is no Tesla CEO today." Analysts from the leading wealth management company Wedbush put it even more bluntly in a [message to clients]() this week, saying that the purchase will "go down as the most overpaid tech acquisition" in history as Musk continues to use his EV company as "his own ATM machine to keep funding the red ink." In the message, the wealth management gurus are calling the whole fiasco a "Twitter nightmare," and it's not hard to see why — this whole debacle does, indeed, have the tenor of a bad dream. **More on Elon:** [*Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk Announces New Limits on Free Speech*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()