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Tesla founder Musk (archive image)
Photo: Michele Tantussi / REUTERS
After his sensational Twitter vote over the weekend, Tesla CEO Elon Musk cashed in his company's shares for the first time in years.
On Monday, he sold more than 930,000 Tesla papers - and took in around $ 1.1 billion (the equivalent of around one billion euros).
This emerges from a mandatory notification to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Musk still holds more than 170 million Tesla shares.
According to the financial service Bloomberg, it is the first time since 2016 that the multi-billionaire has sold shares in the electric car manufacturer.
Musk sells to pay taxes on the proceeds.
Since he is rewarded in stock options at Tesla, he can use cash to pay income taxes due.
Tesla has seen a massive stock market rally in the past few years that, according to billionaire charts like the Forbes list or Bloomberg Billionaires - at least on paper - made Musk the richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of almost $ 300 billion Has.
Musk had users vote on Twitter over the weekend whether he should sell ten percent of his Tesla shares.
Almost 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes were in favor.
If Musk sticks to the result of the Twitter vote as promised, his current sale of less than one percent of his Tesla shares should only have been the beginning.
In the vote, he alluded to a debate about tax avoidance by the super-rich and plans to levy taxes on unrealized gains.
What Musk ultimately wanted to achieve with the vote and the extent to which he planned to sell shares can only be speculated about so far.
The SEC announcement shows that at least the current sale was planned more than two months before the vote.
aar / dpa