Elon Musk’s brother has sold off $28 million in Tesla stock after it lost its trillion dollar company status.
Kimbal Musk is the brother of the tech billionaire and is also a director at Tesla but despite his close ties to the business, Kimbal sold 75,000 shares.
This has trimmed his share of the company down to 1.46 million shares, which are worth around $514 million.
Kimbal Musk has sold a chunk of Tesla shares (Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)
It also means that his stake in the electric vehicle firm is down by just under 5%.
Tesla stock value has plummeted in recent weeks, with sales dropping by 45% in January.
As the stock continues to drop in value, the company has officially lost its ranking as a trillion dollar company.
Many have speculated this is due to Musk’s new role in the Trump administration after he took on the job as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While not technically a government department, the group is said to act as an outside advisor on federal spending.
Musk himself promised to slash trillions from the federal budget and has been at the center of controversy since his appointment.
There was public outrage when Musk and his DOGE team were granted full access to the Treasury payment system.
Elons own brother just sold 75,000 shares of his $tsla stock. They knew the best time to jump ship was at $450. The 2nd best time to jump ship is right now.
Fears have grown that the SpaceX CEO could have access to the confidential data of millions of Americans, including social security and Medicare benefits payments.
It looks like some people who have invested in Tesla have decided to sell up to avoid the risk of more financial loss due to plummeting stocks.
And one person shedding their stocks is none other than Kimbal.
The Musk brothers once co-founded their own software company together, Zip2, back in 1995.
It has been claimed by ex-employees that Trump’s ‘first buddy’ was known for having a temper back then.
Speaking to the BBC, former Zip2 vice president Jim Ambras said that Musk would spend the evenings ‘looking to see who was sitting at their cubes, and there weren’t many people sitting at their cubes — it was 9 pm’.
He continued: “And his face turned red, he was really angry that the entire company wasn’t there in the office at 9 o’clock at night.”
Another employee, former Zip2 systems engineer Branden Spikes, told the BBC that Musk would often work late into the night and fall asleep under his desk.
Spikes also described Musk as being an ‘unusual fellow’ and a ‘know-it-all’, adding that the tech mogul thought he knew ‘just about everything about everything’.
Featured Image Credit: Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW
Elon Musk takes a $100 billion hit as Tesla shares slide, stripping it of its trillion-dollar status.
The 53-year-old sits comfortably as the world’s richest person but things aren’t looking as positive for his electric car company.
Since mid-December, the Tesla CEO’s net worth has dropped by more than $100 billion as Tesla’s stock continues its downward spiral.
On Tuesday (25 February), Tesla shares fell another 8%, closing at $302.80, marking a 25% decline so far this year.
The data shows Tesla’s vehicle registrations in Europe plummeted by 45% in January compared to the previous year, even as overall EV sales on the continent increased. Additionally, sales in China seem to show a downward trend.
Some analysts believe European buyers are turning away from Tesla due to Musk’s deep involvement in the Trump administration, which is currently straining US-Europe relations.
Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty
Others are saying investors are cashing out after Tesla’s massive gains over the past year. Despite the recent slump, the stock has increased 52% in the last 12 months. Gary Black, managing partner at The Future Fund investment group, warned that Tesla shares could slide even further this year given the company’s direction on 2025 vehicle deliveries.
Musk’s influence stretches far beyond Tesla – he also leads SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), Neuralink, and AI company xAI, not to mention his controversial role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
But Tesla investors have long accepted Musk’s multiple responsibilities and they’ve also credited his leadership for the company’s success. So if anything, they view him as more than capable of juggling multiple ventures.
However, events like the recent robotaxi reveal don’t show overwhelming positive feedback. The I, Robot event, back in October, left many investors and Wall Street analysts unimpressed, saying it ‘disappointed expectations in several areas.’
The I, Robot event in October left many investors unimpressed / Sjoerd van der Wal / Contributor / Getty
As a result, Tesla’s stock fell by roughly 15%, and since Musk owned around 13% of the company at the time, his net worth took a hit as well.
Furthermore, Elon Musk and Tesla are being sued by the production company behind Blade Runner 2049 over the robotaxi design.
Nonetheless, Musk continues to roll out new Tesla models, adapting to shifting driver preferences, and the company is also expanding its full self-driving technology into China.
“Tesla’s superior products, new more affordable vehicle, which I believe will be a new form factor and expand Tesla’s total addressable market, and the promise of unsupervised autonomy will sell more Teslas,” Black wrote on X.
At the time of writing, the tech billionaire’s net worth sits at $379.9 billion but it’s still a massive $144 billion richer than the second-richest person in the world, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
More than 150,000 Canadians have signed a petition to revoke Elon Musk’s citizenship.
Filed on 20 February, the parliamentary petition accuses Musk of being ‘engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada’.
It points to the tech billionaire closely aligning himself with Donald Trump, who has repeatedly made controversial statements about conquering Canada and turning it into the US’s 51st state.
British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s House of Commons, where it was sponsored by New Democrat MP and Musk-critic Charlie Angus.
Although the Tesla CEO was born in South Africa, he has Canadian citizenship through his mother, who is from Regina, Saskatchewan.
The owner of X (formerly Twitter) has been working closely with Trump’s administration to shrink the US federal government spending.
Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty
Trump has made multiple threats to impose steep tariffs on Canadian goods and openly boasted about having the US annex the country.
The petition claims that the SpaceX founder’s alignment with Trump makes him ‘a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty.’
It asks Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – whom Trump has often mocked as ‘governor’ – to take away Musk’s Canadian passport and revoke his citizenship with immediate effect.
Petitions like this need 500+ signatures to be formally certified and presented to Canada’s House of Commons for a formal government response, according to the Canadian Press. This has posed no problem as of late Sunday (23 February), Reed’s petition collected about 157,000 signatures and still continues to grow.
P A Thompson / Getty
Canada’s House of Commons is set to resume work on 24 March unless a general election is called before then.
The petition’s signing period will remain open until 20 June.
The world’s richest man has played a key role in Trump’s aggressive cost-cutting measures, leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – a program that has resulted in massive layoffs across US federal agencies.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of US government civil servants have been affected, including those working at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.
An Economist/YouGov poll of nearly 1,600 respondents recently found Musk and his so-called DOGE venture are far less popular with the public than they claim to be serving, with many Americans opposing the deep cuts.
It seems Musk is unfazed by the petition and continues to use his X platform to promote his political views.
On Sunday, Musk reposted one post, reading: “Of course we support Doge! Those who don’t support it are unAmerican.”
President Donald Trump has responded to Elon Musk’s plan for thousands of dollars in ‘DOGE dividends’ to be refunded to Americans.
Musk made the suggestion along with his supporters to cut a check for Americans for the ‘savings’ that have allegedly been made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
And it looks like Trump is a fan of the idea.
Speaking at a conference in Miami on Wednesday (February 19), the president backed the Tesla boss’ plan to give 20% of the money saved straight back into the pockets of the American taxpayers.
President Trump appears to be in favor of Musk’s idea (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump said: “The numbers are incredible, Elon. So many billions, it’s billions, hundreds of billions. We’re thinking of giving 20% back to the American citizens and 20% to pay back debt, pay down debt.
“By doing this, Americans will be telling us where there’s waste, they’ll be reporting it themselves.”
So far, it hasn’t been made clear where the remaining 60% of savings will go.
Most of the federal spendings reductions made by DOGE have come from canceling contracts and making mass layoffs of government staff.
The organization, which is not technically a government department and is instead an outside advisor, is facing a slew of lawsuits.
Jessica Riedl, who is a senior fellow at right-leaning think tank Manhattan Institute, spoke to The Washington Post where she said: “Given the very small share of federal spending that has been reduced, the American people could possibly take their dividend to Starbucks for half off of one coffee.
President Trump spoke about the plan in Miami (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“When the budget deficit is $2 trillion and Congress is going to add hundreds of billions of dollars more, any savings should go to deficit reduction, rather than another tax rebate.”
James Fishback, who is the CEO of investment firm Azoria, has claimed that 78 million households that pay federal income taxes would each receive $5,000 under the plan, which would involve Musk chopping down federal spending by a whopping $2 trillion.
Fears have grown over where those cuts would be made in order to achieve this new budget, with many people worrying that this could impact vital things like Medicare benefits payments.
On X, formerly Twitter, Fishback wrote: “Our proposal for the president is simple: Taxpaying households should receive $1 for every $5 of total savings that DOGE delivers.”
In response, Musk said: “Will check with the president.”
And the very next day, Trump spoke about the idea in Miami.
There are more workforce woes in Washington, as over 20 staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have reportedly resigned from their positions.
The head of the DOGE has been taking Donald Trump‘s request to be ‘more aggressive’ seriously, and after already gutting departments like USAID, he’s demanded that federal workers return to in-office work AND sent over 2.3 million employees an email asking, “What did you do last week?”
After departments like the FBI told its staff to ignore Musk’s email, the tech billionaire issued a fresh ultimatum telling government workers he’ll give them one more chance to reply.
As reported by the Associated Press, over 20 DOGE workers have made their feelings clear and resigned in spectacular fashion.
There’s been major backlash and mass firings since the DOGE took power (BRYAN DOZIER / Contributor / Getty)
The letter was signed by 21 staffers, who had various roles, including engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers.
In the scathing resignation, they jointly wrote: “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations.
“However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
Calling out plans to “dismantle critical public services,” they added the accusation that those who’ve assisted Musk and President Trump in slashing the government workforce are ‘political ideologues’ who don’t have the right skills to take on the task ahead of them.
The 21 come from an office that was established during Barack Obama’s administration and was formerly known as the United States Digital Service. All had high-ranking roles at tech companies like Amazon and Google before joining the government out of a sense of duty to the public.
Apparently, the former staffers were called into interviews the day after Trump’s January 20 inauguration, having to undertake interviews with a series of young and unknown individuals wearing White House visitors’ badges.
The staffers suggest these people had limited technical knowledge and continued: “Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability. This process created significant security risks.”
More fake news from Associated Propaganda. These were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office. They would have been fired had they not resigned.
This follows backlash to general complaints that Musk has employed a legion of young staff who aren’t equipped to slash $2 trillion of government spending in the right way.
As for the 21 resignations, this is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Over 75,000 federal employees have apparently taken the ‘deferred resignation’ offer, while the United States Office of Personnel Management reports that over 220,000 who were in their probationary period have also been laid off.
That’s without taking into account layoffs in the Energy Department, Department of Homeland Security, at least 17 inspectors general, and more.
There were recent jokes that an NSFW AI video involving Musk and Trump was able to play on screens at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because the DOGE had fired the tech staff.
Responding to the DOGE resignations, Musk posted X and called the story ‘fake news’. The DOGE head referred to them as “Dem political holdovers” and said they “would have been fired had they not resigned.”
