Elon Musk was the second person on the planet ever to amass a personal fortune of more than $200 billion, breaking the relevant barrier in January 2021, a few months after Jeff Bezos.
But now the Twitter boss and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX managed to become the first person in history to “delete” 200 billion. dollars from his wealth, as noted by Bloomberg. At the age of 51, Musk saw his fortune shrink to 137 billion. dollars after Tesla’s stock plunged in recent weeks and plunged 11% last Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His assets had jumped to 340 billion. dollars on November 4, 2021, and remained the world’s richest man until recently, when he was ousted from the top spot by French luxury goods giant LVMH, Bernard Arnault.
The sinking of Tesla shares took Musk’s fortune with it.
Musk had seen his assets skyrocket during the pandemic. Tesla surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time in October 2021, joining the club of tech giants Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc, even as its electric vehicles represented only a fraction of the total car market.
But Tesla’s dominance of electric cars is now in jeopardy as it feels the heat of its rivals, traditional automakers.
Tesla is offering US consumers a $7,500 discount on its two most popular models before the end of the year, while reportedly reducing production at its Shanghai plant. Meanwhile, with pressure on Tesla mounting, Musk is busy with Twitter, which he bought in late October for $44 billion, while also selling Tesla shares.
The slide in Tesla shares has been so great — they’ve sunk 65% in the year to date — that Musk sold such a stake to cover his acquisition of Twitter, they’re no longer his biggest asset, according to the Bloomberg Wealth Index . His $44.8 billion stake in SpaceX exceeds that of $44 billion. dollars to Tesla.
Musk now owns 42.2% of Space X and has repeatedly blasted the Federal Reserve on Twitter for aggressively raising interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation. “Tesla is performing better than ever!” he tweeted on December 16. “We don’t control the Federal Reserve. That’s the real problem here.”
