Elon Musk sells new $3.6bn tranche of Tesla shares

The disposal, revealed in a regulatory filing, takes the total amount raised by Musk from sales of his stock in the electric carmaker this year to more than $20bn.

The Tesla CEO has been raising funds to pay for his $44bn acquisition of Twitter, although the filing did not give a purpose for the sale of 22m shares between Monday and Wednesday this week.

Musk put in more than $20bn of his own money to buy Twitter in October, alongside $7.1bn from associates and about $4bn from his existing stake in the social media platform.

However, he also controls other valuable businesses, including his rocket company SpaceX, which is reportedly in talks about a share offering that could value it at up to $150bn.