WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (AFP) - The managing director of Elon Musk's family office is seeking new equity investors for Twitter, news platform Semafor reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the fundraising effort.

Musk's money manager, Jared Birchall, reached out to potential investors this week, offering shares of Twitter at the same price, $54.20, that Musk paid to take the company private in October, according to the report.

Twitter and Musk did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments.

Musk sold another $3.6 billion worth of shares in Tesla Inc earlier this week, making it nearly $40 billion worth of shares in the electric-vehicle company sold this year.

The sale is the second big chunk of Tesla stock the billionaire has cashed out since his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, despite saying in April that he was done selling the electric-vehicle company's shares.

Meanwhile, Twitter has seen advertisers flee amid worries about Musk's approach to policing tweets, hitting revenues and its ability to pay interest on the $13 billion debt that Musk took on to buy the social media company.

Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor who said he put less than $1 million in Musk's original takeover of Twitter, confirmed that he was contacted Thursday evening about another funding round, Semafor reported.