Elon Musk settled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil lawsuit accusing him of waiting too long in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of Twitter (now X).
Under the settlement disclosed on Monday, a trust in Musk’s name will pay a $1.5 million civil fine. Musk did not admit wrongdoing, and won’t have to give up any of the $150 million he allegedly saved from the delay.
Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, said the result vindicated his client, writing in a statement that, “A trust vehicle has agreed to a small fine for being late on one filing.”
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Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, bought Twitter for $44 billion in a leveraged buyout in late 2022. He later changed the platform’s name to X, and merged it with his artificial intelligence firm xAI, and then with SpaceX earlier this year. He is the richest man in the world, and has a net worth of roughly $790 billion, according to Forbes.
The settlement requires approval from U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, who in February, rejected Musk’s bid to dismiss the case. It ends more than seven years of legal battles between Musk and the regulator, starting in September 2018 when the SEC charged him with securities fraud for tweeting he had “secured” funding to potentially take his electric car company Tesla.
Musk had settled that case by paying a $20 million civil fine, letting Tesla lawyers review some Twitter posts in advance, and giving up his role as Tesla’s chairman.
The SEC had said in its January 2025 lawsuit that Musk’s 11-day delay in revealing his initial 5% Twitter stake in late March and early April 2022 let him buy more than $500 million of shares at artificially low prices, before he finally revealed a 9.2% stake. The regulator had argued that Musk should pay a civil fine and repay the $150 million he allegedly saved at the expense of unsuspecting investors.
Musk said the delay was inadvertent, and that the SEC was violating his free speech rights by targeting him. The SEC sued Musk six days before former President Joe Biden left the White House and was replaced by Donald Trump. Current SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has been refocusing the regulator’s enforcement priorities.
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“It’s an embarrassing day for the SEC,” said Amanda Fischer, former chief of staff to Gary Gensler, who chaired the regulator during the Biden administration. She said the settlement “should cause the public to question whether the SEC is protecting White House insiders at the expense of ordinary investors.”
Musk had previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which focused on cost-cutting, before leaving in May 2025. He is also currently in a high-stakes legal battle with OpenAI over the AI company’s shift to a for-profit model.