Elon Musk lost $50 billion in two days, setting a new record in a controversial Twitter vote. It’s the greatest two-day drop in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s history. The biggest one-day drop since Jeff Bezos’ $36 billion drops following his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019.
Tesla’s thrashing comes on the heels of a turbulent few days for the carmaker. It all started when Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his ownership in the company. It was followed by reports that his brother Kimbal had sold shares immediately before the vote.
Musk’s advantage over Bezos as the world’s richest person has shrunk to $83 billion as a result of the decline. Musk beat Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for the title for the first time in January. The gap between the two has since widened to $143 billion. An amount bigger than Bill Gates’ net worth, the world’s fourth-richest person. Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management lost more than $750 million in Tuesday’s selloff, while Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, the company’s second-largest individual shareholder, lost $2.1 billion.
Despite the collapse, Musk’s fortune is still up 70% this year, thanks to Tesla’s gains on the back of stellar profits growth and delivery numbers, as well as SpaceX’s greater value. Tesla’s market value has remained above $1 trillion, a level it reached last month after its third-quarter results exceeded market forecasts and rental-car business Hertz Global Holdings Inc. made an order for 100,000 Tesla vehicles.
