Elon Musk has lost $13 billion – some R222 billion – so far in 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk lost the most money of any billionaire in 2022 as Tesla shares tumbled.
He’s the only person to lose $200 billion, per Bloomberg, but is still worth $124 billion.
Elon Musk left 2022 as the first and only person in history to lose $200 billion from their net worth, and he’s already lost $13 billion – equivalent to around R222 billion – so far in 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk lost more money than any other billionaire last year, ceding his title of the world’s richest person to Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH. He’s still the world’s second-richest person, with a net worth of $124 billion as of January 5.
Much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in shares of his electric-car company, Tesla. Last year, the company’s stock fell by almost 70% in 2022. Tesla’s investors have expressed concern about Musk’s commitment to the EV company amid his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last October.
“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” KoGuan Leo, Tesla’s third-largest individual shareholder, tweeted in December. “Tesla needs and deserves to have working full time CEO.” Musk sold billions in Tesla stock to fund the Twitter acquisition. His stake in his space exploration company, SpaceX, is now his biggest asset, according to Bloomberg.
Apart from Musk’s distraction with Twitter, Tesla fell victim to slumping demand for electric vehicles, specifically in one of its largest markets, China. It ended last year by giving rare discounts as the prices for used Teslas plummeted. But Adam Jonas, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said Tesla will likely lead the EV competition in 2023, because its supply will be able to outpace consumer demand.
The stock is up over 2%, year-to-date. Meanwhile, Musk’s Twitter takeover continues to be marked by chaos. He was recently mocked by self-proclaimed Twitter investor Leonidas Raisini, who offered to buy Twitter at a $30 billion discount. Raisini wrote a letter mirroring the letter Musk wrote to Bret Taylor, the former chair of Twitter’s board, offering to buy the company last April.
Insider was unable to independently confirm whether or not Raisini is or was an investor in Twitter.In late December, Musk tweeted a poll asking if he should step down as Twitter CEO. Over half the over 17.5 million respondents voted yes, and Musk tweeted that he “will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”Since his Twitter takeover, the company has been sued by at least 100 of the thousands of former employees Musk fired after he acquired the platform, and the social media site has seen a decline in advertisers.
