Elon Musk has sold nearly $7 billion worth of shares in Tesla as he gets his finances in order ahead of his court battle with Twitter.
Musk disclosed in series of regulatory filings that he unloaded about 8 million shares of his company Tesla Inc. in recent days.
“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.
Musk is by far the largest individual shareholder in both Tesla and Twitter.
Shares of Tesla rose almost 2% before the opening bell Wednesday. Shares of Twitter Inc., up 16% in the past month with most believing Musk faces long-shot odds of success in court, jumped another 3%.
Musk countersued Twitter last week, accusing the company of fraud over his aborted $44 billion acquisition. He claimed that Twitter held back critical information and misled his team about the size of its user base.
Musk alleges that Twitter committed fraud, breach of contract and violation of a securities law in Texas, where Musk lives.
Musk offered to buy Twitter earlier this year, then tried to back out of the deal claiming the social platform was infested with a larger numbers of “spam bots” and fake accounts than Twitter had disclosed.