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Within 48 hours of reclaiming the title, Elon Musk has once again lost his position as the wealthiest person in the world, according to Fortune. This week, the head of Tesla and SpaceX briefly reclaimed the top position on the worldwide wealth pyramid. His estimated net wealth was $187.1 billion, based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
According to Fortune, Tesla shares fell more than 5% on Wednesday, reducing Mr Musk’s net worth by nearly $2 billion and allowing French billionaire Bernard Arnault, CEO of the French luxury brand Louis Vuitton, to reclaim the top spot. Mr. Musk’s net worth fell $1.91 billion on the day, to $184 billion. This put him below Mr. Arnault’s $186 billion fortune.
Notably, the role reversal occurred just two days after Mr Musk dethroned Mr Arnault. The French billionaire deposed Twitter’s CEO in December after Tesla’s stock price fell by 65% in 2022 due to a variety of factors.
According to Bloomberg, Tesla has risen 100% due to increased investor demand, customer interest in recently discounted Tesla models, and a better economic forecast. But, as recently as December, things looked very different for Mr Musk. Mr Musk’s net worth fell by more than $200 billion between November 2021 and December 2022, considered one of the largest wealth losses in recent history.
The sudden crash was caused by the rapid drop in the value of Tesla shares at the time. Last year, the company had its worst year on Wall Street, losing $700 billion due to investor concerns about the effects of COVID-19 in China and Mr Musk’s contentious Twitter takeover.
Mr Musk made light of his at times erratic financial situation. On Twitter last week, he joked that he had spent $44 billion to acquire “the world’s largest non-profit” after his continuous takeover of the microblogging website in 2022.
Mr. Musk tweeted in November that the microblogging site was losing nearly $4 million per day. The billionaire then presided over massive layoffs at the social media company. Twitter recently announced the eighth round of layoffs. Notably, it has reduced its workforce by nearly 75% in recent months, from 7,500 to around 2,000.
