NEW YORK, January 2, 2026, 08:07 ET
- Elon Musk disclosed a roughly $100 million gift of Tesla shares to charities in a U.S. filing
- The filing said the recipients indicated they do not plan to sell the stock in the near term
- Tesla shares were higher ahead of the automaker’s fourth-quarter delivery update
Elon Musk donated Tesla shares worth about $100 million to charity, a U.S. securities filing showed.
Tesla (TSLA) shares were higher in premarket trading on Friday as investors looked ahead to the company’s fourth-quarter delivery update.
The disclosure lands at a sensitive moment for the stock, with the market focused on demand signals from deliveries and any progress on Tesla’s autonomy push.
Insider selling can weigh on shares by adding supply, but the filing framed Musk’s transfer as a gift and said the recipients were not planning to sell.
In a Form 4 — a document corporate insiders file with the Securities and Exchange Commission when their holdings change — Musk reported a gift of 210,699 Tesla common shares dated December 30. A footnote said the transfer was tied to his “year-end tax planning” and that the charities had said they had “no current intention to sell such stock,” while another note referenced the Elon Musk Revocable Trust. 1
The filing did not name the recipient charities and listed the transfer price as $0.00 per share. Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, Business Insider reported, adding that Musk has argued he needs more voting control to expand Tesla’s artificial-intelligence and robotics ambitions. 2
Tesla shares were up about 2.5% in premarket trading on Friday as investors digested the disclosure and awaited the deliveries report, TipRanks said. 3
Tesla has also published a company-compiled consensus of sell-side forecasts, updated on January 1, that pegs fourth-quarter deliveries at 422,850 vehicles and full-year 2025 deliveries at 1,640,752. The same compilation lists energy storage deployments of 13.4 gigawatt-hours for the quarter, and said Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles in the third quarter. 4
Tesla reports deliveries — the number of vehicles handed over to customers — as a key proxy for quarterly sales. The figure can diverge from production because vehicles may be in transit at quarter-end.
Other EV names also moved higher at the start of the year, with China’s NIO and BYD among the gainers, Barron’s reported. 5
Charitable donations of appreciated stock can carry tax advantages in the United States, because donors can avoid capital-gains taxes that would be triggered by a sale while claiming a deduction, subject to limits. The SEC filing described Musk’s transfer as part of year-end tax planning.
Musk has also sought to reassure investors about his long-term commitment to the automaker. “I’ll still be CEO in 5 years… unless I die,” he said in a recent appearance cited by the Times of India. 6
