Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth nearly $4 billion after buying Twitter

Musk, the world’s richest man, had about $20 billion in cash after selling a part of his stake in Tesla and would have required to raise an additional $2 billion to $3 billion to finance the Twitter deal, according to a Reuters calculation.

The latest stock sale comes as analysts had also widely expected Musk to sell additional Tesla shares. Musk had earlier asserted there would be no further sales planned after he completed a share sale in April and August.

Tesla has lost nearly half its market value and Musk’s net worth slumped by $70 billion ever since he bid for Twitter in April. Musk, the world’s richest person, said in August he was done offloading Tesla stock. Tesla Inc. erased all of its gains from the past 17 months as the stock has been struggling for the most part this year, swept up in the broader risk-off market trend.

He told a Twitter follower it was important to avoid an “emergency sale” of Tesla shares in case he was forced to close the acquisition of the social-media network and struggle to bring in additional equity partners.

Still, some had speculated that the billionaire would sell more stock to shore up the deal. He’s unloaded about $36 billion worth of shares in the past year, around half of that since he went public with his Twitter buyout plan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Elon Musk took control of Twitter and fired its top executives in late October after a drawn out back-and forth between the world’s richest person and the influential social media company. In early November, he announced an $8 per month charge to verify users’ accounts, arguing the plan would solve the platform’s issues with bots and trolls while creating a new revenue stream for the company.