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Elon Musk Gave $5.7 Billion of Tesla Shares to Charity Last Year

The world's richest man made the donations in November, but the names of the recipients weren't disclosed.

Antonio Ruiz Camacho Former principal writer
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho was a principal writer covering personal finance. Prior to this, he was with Bankrate Credit Cards and CreditCards.com, where he led the editorial team for nearly five years. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, Salon and elsewhere. Also a fiction writer, he earned his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin's New Writers Project and is the author of the award-winning short story collection "Barefoot Dogs."
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Antonio Ruiz Camacho
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Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world. 

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Elon Musk , CEO of and SpaceX , donated around $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares to charity last year. The donations were made in November, according to a security filing Monday.

The filing doesn't name the recipients of the five donations, which totaled about 5 million shares of the electric vehicle company and world's most valuable automaker. The donations came as the billionaire sold $16.4 billion worth of shares after polling Twitter users about offloading 10% of his stake in Tesla in early November, according to Reuters. Much of that sale was intended to cover taxes incurred by Musk exercising stock options, The New York Times noted.

The donations make Musk 2021's second-biggest donor in the US, behind Bill and Melinda Gates, who gave $15 billion, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. However, they represent only 2.6% of Musk's total fortune, which is valued at $227 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, and Musk has trailed other billionaires when it comes to donations as a percentage of his net worth, Reuters said. The news outlet also noted that analysts have said donating shares would give Musk a significant tax break.

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Musk's other philanthropic efforts include announcing in January 2021 that he'd donate $100 million toward a prize for best carbon removal technology.   

Tesla doesn't operate a public relations department to field requests for comment.