Elon Musk Exercises More Stock Options, Sells $963 Million Worth of Shares

Elon Musk Jokes About ‘Quitting My Jobs’ After Exercising Options and Selling More Shares

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been selling Tesla stock in recent weeks, and at about two-thirds of the way through what he has planned to sell, the mega-billionaire and world’s richest person is apparently thinking about quitting his job, after exercising more stock options and selling shares.

Regulatory filings on Thursday showed Musk sold around $963 million USD worth of Tesla stock after exercising 2.2 million options (via Yahoo Finance).

A few hours later, Musk tweeted that he’s “thinking of quitting [his] jobs & becoming an influencer full-time [what do you think]”.

In sum, Musk has sold off about $11.8 billion USD worth of Tesla stock throughout the course of the last five weeks.

Musk doesn’t make an annual salary for Tesla, but rather he has a complex stock option setup that pays him out upon successes for the company and when he decides to exercise options that let him own Tesla stocks at a low, fixed entry-level price.

Still, Musk has been criticized for his use of Twitter in the past, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claiming in March that some of Musk’s tweets violated a settlement previously agreed upon.

Last month, JPMorgan Chase also announced a $162 million USD lawsuit it has lodged against Musk for one of his tweets about Tesla funding.