By Brian Chappatta
Elon Musk became the second person to amass a personal fortune of more than $200 billion in January 2021, months after Jeff Bezos.
The CEO of Tesla Inc. has now achieved a unique first: becoming the only person in history to wipe $200 billion off his net worth.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk, 51, is worth $137 billion in recent weeks after Tesla shares fell 11 percent on Tuesday. His fortune reached $340 billion on November 4, 2021, and he remained the world’s richest man until he was taken over this month by Bernard Arnault, the French tycoon behind luxury goods LVMH.
The round-numbered milestone reflects how high Musk has risen during the surge in asset prices during the easy money pandemic. Tesla surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization for the first time in October 2021, joining ubiquitous tech companies Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc, although its electric vehicles accounted for only a fraction of the total. represented a part of it. car market.
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Now Tesla’s lead in electric cars, the basis of its high valuation, is under threat as rivals catch up. It is offering US consumers a rare $7,500 discount to take delivery of its two highest-volume models by the end of the year, while also reducing production at its Shanghai plant.
Meanwhile, with pressure mounting on Tesla, Musk has been busy with Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion in late October. It has taken a speedy and disruptive approach, firing staff, then asking them to come back, and haphazardly enforcing content policies to justify banning the accounts of some prominent journalists who covered it.
The decline in Tesla shares has been so sharp — shares are down 65 percent in 2022 — and Musk has sold so much this year to cover his Twitter purchase that they are no longer his biggest asset, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. Musk’s $44.8 billion stake in Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which he closely controls, dwarfs his nearly $44 billion position in Tesla stock (he still has options worth about $27.8 billion). As of the latest filing, Musk now owns 42.2 percent of SpaceX.
Musk, for his part, dismissed concerns about Tesla and repeatedly criticized the Federal Reserve on Twitter for raising interest rates at the fastest pace in a generation.
“Tesla works better than ever!” Musk wrote on his Twitter account on December 16: “We do not control the Federal Reserve. This is the real problem here.”
The billionaire, who previously borrowed heavily against his stake in Tesla, recently warned about the dangers of borrowed money in panic markets.
“I would really advise people not to have margin debt in a volatile stock market and, you know, keep the dust dry in terms of money,” Musk said on the All-In podcast this month. “In a down market, you can experience some pretty extreme events.”
