Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) chief executive office Elon Musk said he sold enough shares in the electric carmaker to meet his goal of offloading 10% of his holdings.
The world’s richest person announced in November that he would sell 10% of his Tesla shares after his Twitter followers voted in favour of the move.
He disposed of another 583,611 shares worth US$548mln on Tuesday, bringing his total sales since early November to around US$14.1bn.
"I sold enough stock to get to around 10%, plus the option exercise stuff," Musk told the satirical website The Babylon Bee in an interview.
When asked whether he sold the stock because of the Twitter poll, the billionaire said he needed to exercise stock options that are expiring next year "no matter what".
He added that he sold an additional "incremental stock" to get near 10%.
Musk tweeted at the weekend that he would pay more than US$11bn in taxes this year.
He recently moved Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas and criticised the western US state for over-taxation.
"California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is... becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation," he said, adding that it is "increasingly difficult to get things done" in California.
Musk has now sold 13.5 million Tesla shares, of which 8.06 million were sold to cover taxes on exercising options.