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Investor Chamath Palihapitiya confirms selling shares in Virgin Galactic

March 06, 2021 at 03:56 pm EST

(Reuters) - Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya on Saturday confirmed in a tweet that he has freed up some capital by selling shares in Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc, for investing at scale without impacting his pace and strategic view.

"I hated to do it but my balance sheet shrank by almost $2B this week," he mentioned in the tweet https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1368247776216117248 thread, adding a sad emoji.

In the long tweet thread, mentioning about reviewing and remodeling of everything he invested in, Palihapitiya also clarified that he did not sell any shares of any other SPAC he launched.

A regulatory filing showed Palihapitiya sold 6.2 million shares in the space tourism company he helped take public in 2019, for around $213 million.

In an emailed statement through a spokesman on Friday, Palihapitiya said he would redirect the funds from the share sale toward a "large investment" focused on the fight against climate change.

Virgin Galactic did not immediately respond to request for comment.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)

Stocks mentioned in the article

	Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
	VIRGIN GALACTIC HOLDINGS, INC.	0.8875 USD	+3.15%	+3.67%	354M

Chamath Palihapitiya

Mr. Chamath Palihapitiya is a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. IV, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V, a Chairman at Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc., a Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Social+Capital Partnership LLC, a Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner at Social Capital Holdings, Inc., a Chairman at Ezetap Mobile Solutions Pvt Ltd. and a Chairman at LotusFlare, Inc. He is on the Board of Directors at Captricity, Inc., Remind101, Inc., MAD Apparel, Inc., Confer Health, Inc., Premise Data Corp., Social Capital Public Equity Partners Offshore Fund Ltd. and Golden State Warriors LLC. Mr. Palihapitiya was previously employed as a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. III, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. II, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp., a Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Pep Management LLC, an Independent Director by Slack Technologies, Inc., a Co-Founder by Remote Health Services Corp., a Vice President-Growth, Mobile & International by Facebook, Inc., a Vice President-Business Operations by Historic AOL LLC, a Principal by Mayfield Fund LLC, a Principal by Spinners, Inc., and a Principal by Time Warner Cable, Inc. He also served on the board at Glooko, Inc., 47 Center, Inc., BitYota, Inc., CipherGraph Networks, Inc., Consorte Media, Inc., Fixya, Inc., Groq, Inc., Lemon, Inc., Playdom, Inc. and Syapse, Inc. He received his undergraduate degree from The University of Waterloo.

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The Social+Capital Partnership LLC The Social+Capital Partnership LLC Investment ManagersFinance The Social+Capital Partnership LLC (Social Capital) is a venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Chamath PalihapitIya, Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.	Chief Executive Officer
MAD Apparel, Inc. MAD Apparel, Inc. Tools & HardwareConsumer Durables MAD Apparel, Inc. manufactures athletic apparel for men and women. It provides shirts, shorts, leggings and capris. The firm also offers The Core, which snaps directly onto Athos apparel to collect and analyze data from the garment’s sensors, and delivers that data to mobile app via Bluetooth; and iOS only app. The company was founded by Dhananja Pradhan Jayalath and Christopher Wiebe on October 11, 2012 and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.	Founder

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