Elon Musk No Longer World's Richest Man After Losing $1.9 Billion In A Day

Elon Musk has once again lost his spot as the world's richest person just 48 hours after he reclaimed the title, Fortune reported. Earlier this week, the Tesla and SpaceX chief briefly retook the number one spot on the global wealth pyramid. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth reached an estimated $187.1 billion.

However, Fortune reported that shares of Tesla fell by more than 5% on Wednesday, causing Mr Musk's net worth to drop 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 was down $1.91 billion on the day, to $184 billion. This placed him below the $186 billion fortune of Mr Arnault. 

Notably, the role reversal happened just two days after Mr Musk knocked Mr Arnault off the top spot. The French billionaire unseated the Twitter chief in December after Tesla's share price fell by 65% in 2022 due to various factors. 

However, Tesla had climbed 100 per cent, driven by increased investor demand, customer interest in recently discounted Tesla models, and a better economic forecast, according to Bloomberg. But as recently as December, things looked very different for Mr Musk. Between November 2021 and December 2022, Mr Musk's net worth fell by over $200 billion, which was regarded as one of the largest losses of wealth in recent history. 

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The rapid decrease in the value of Tesla shares at the time caused the sudden crash. The company had its worst year ever on Wall Street last year, losing $700 billion because of investor apprehensions regarding the effects of COVID-19 in China and Mr Musk's contentious takeover of Twitter.

Mr Musk himself made light of his at times chaotic finances. Last week, taking to Twitter, he joked that after his continuous takeover of the micro-blogging website in 2022, he had spent $44 billion to acquire "the world's largest non-profit". 

In November, Mr Musk tweeted that the microblogging site was losing nearly $4 million a day. The billionaire then presided over deep layoffs at the social media company. Recently, Twitter announced its eighth round of layoffs. Notably, it has slashed its workforce nearly 75%, from 7,500 employees down to about 2,000 in recent months.