Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and head of electric vehicle company Tesla, has sold shares in his company in preparation for a potential takeover of social media platform Twitter.

According to a series of six regulatory filings, Musk sold 7.92 million shares in the company, worth around $6.88 billion.

Musk noted that he needed the capital in case he was forced to make good on an offer to buy Twitter in a deal worth approximately $44bn.

Previously, reports claimed that Musk had secured around $7bn of financing for the deal from outside investors to reduce the reliance on his own fortune. Investors are said to include Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

The latest selloff took place on the 5th, 8th and 9th of August. He tweeted to say that after these sales, he was done liquidating his stock.

“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,” his post stated.

Musk sold $8.4bn of Tesla shares in April when he was still planning on buying Twitter of his own volition. At the point, he also tweeted: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”

The Musk Twitter Saga

Like many things with Musk, it started with a Tweet. After mentioning the importance of free speech, and casting doubt on Twitter’s commitment to it, he later announced that he had become the biggest shareholder in the company,

Since buying his 9.2% stake for $2.9bn, he was widely expected to join the board of Twitter. However, when he declined, it raised the question of why. As a board member, Musk would have been limited to holding a maximum share of 14.9% in Twitter. This meant joining the board would have stopped him buying the social media platform entirely.

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And that was when he said he was going to buy Twitter outright.

However, he put the deal on hold in May, claiming that he didn’t trust Twitter’s stats on the number of bots and fake accounts on the platform. He wanted time to do his own evaluation into the prevalence of spam on Twitter.

Since then, he has threatened to walk away from the deal.

Despite hesitance at the start, Twitter has taken legal action to force Musk to complete the deal. Reneging on the purchase could land Musk with a $1bn fee.

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