Elon Musk Loses World’s Richest Person Tag Hours After Claiming Title

Elon Musk remained the world’s richest person for the most part of 2022, until the tech industry started showing some struggles.

New Delhi: Twitter CEO Elon Musk briefly became the world’s richest person by surpassing Bernard Arnault, CEO of luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH, only to lose the title shortly after.

According to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, Bernard Arnault is now worth $216 billion, while Elon Musk is worth $200 billion. Elon Musk, who saw his net worth tumble by more than $100 billion in 2022, had been replaced by Arnault as the world’s richest man in December last year as well.

The Tesla CEO remained the world’s richest person for the most part of 2022, until the tech industry started showing some struggles and during Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. In January this year, Musk had created a Guinness World Record for having lost money more than anyone in history.

As of December 2022, Elon Musk’s worth was $168.5 billion, less than the $172.9 billion net worth of Arnault. In January 2021, Musk became the richest person in the world for the first time, with a net worth of more than $185 billion. Musk lost between $180 billion and $200 billion since November 2021, largely due to the poor performance of Tesla stocks in recent years, according to the report. His fortune went from about $320 billion in 2021 to about $147 billion then.

Meanwhile, as of last month, Musk-owned Twitter is worth only about $15 billion, a massive 33 per cent lower than the $44 billion Musk and his co-investors paid to acquire the platform. Twitter has struggled financially since Musk took over.

Financial services giant Fidelity had estimated in its monthly report of portfolio valuations that Twitter is now worth just one-third worth of what Musk paid for the micro-blogging platform.