Business

Elon Musk ‘thinking of leaving his jobs to become an influencer

Published

5 years ago

December 11, 2021

Seun Owope

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk is “thinking” of leaving his jobs and becoming an influencer, the world’s richest man tweeted on Thursday.

“Thinking of quitting my jobs and becoming an influencer full-time wdyt [what do you think],” Musk said in the tweet, without elaborating.

It was not immediately clear if Musk was being serious about quitting his roles.

Musk, who is also the founder and CEO of rocket company SpaceX, and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company, said during a conference call in January that he expects to be the CEO of Tesla for “several years”

“It would be nice to have a bit more free time on my hands as opposed to just working day and night, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep 7 days a week. Pretty intense,” he had said.

Elon Musk has sold nearly $12 billion worth of shares over the past month since he polled Twitter users about offloading 10% of his stake in the electric-car maker.

Just yesterday, the billionaire sold another 934,091 shares for $963m to pay for taxes on the exercise of stock options to buy 2.17 million shares in Tesla, according to US securities filings.

He has sold a combined 11.03 million shares and has acquired 12.87 million shares by exercising options since November 8.

Musk said on November 6 he would sell 10% of his stake if Twitter users agreed.

He owned a combination of about 244 million shares through his trust and stock options, bringing his stake in Tesla to about 23% as of June 30. It included 170 million shares held by his trust.

Following the latest transactions yesterday, Musk still has an option to buy about 10 million more shares at $6.24 each, which expires in August next year.