Billionaire investor George Soros has dumped his entire stake in Tesla (TSLA) after owning it for less than a year, likely bagging handsome gains from the electric carmaker’s soaring stock price in the first three months of 2023.
Soros’s family office, Soros Fund Management, sold $16 million worth of Tesla shares between January and March, according to an SEC filing on Friday (May 12). The firm began acquiring Tesla shares for the first time in the second quarter last year and incrementally grew its holding throughout 2022. Tesla’s stock price surged 68 percent in the first quarter after losing nearly 70 percent last year. Soros likely profited from his recent sale of Tesla shares, although it’s unclear when those transactions took place exactly.
Soros, known for his pledge to invest in zero-emission companies, also opened new positions in EV makers Nio and Lucid last spring. He also became a shareholder in Ford shortly before it began delivering its electric F-150 lightning pickup truck in May 2022.
In the first quarter, the Soros fund reduced stakes in several tech companies, including Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Salesforce and Intuit. Notably, the firm sold 10.8 million worth of shares in Rivian, an Amazon-backed electric truck maker. Soros still held $55.4 million worth of shares in Rivian at the end of March, according to Friday’s filing.
Soros, 92, has a net worth estimated at $8.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His U.S. stock portfolio is worth about $5 billion.
Over the weekend, scores of posts claiming Soros had died of a heart attack went viral on Twitter. A spokesperson for the billionaire told Reuters today (May 15) Soros is “alive and healthy” and that rumors on social media about his death are false.
Rumors that I had a heart attack are completely false. I am alive and healthy.
— George Soros (@georgesoros) May 15, 2023