The owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter has lost more money than many of us will ever see.

Stock markets fell by about 33% in the first days of the pandemic, but then, Elon Musk made a killing. Only it was in 2022 that the Russians launched their war against the Ukrainians, and the Fed hit stocks in the US to fight inflation. As a result, Musk lost billions and even set a world record that speaks for itself: he is the first person in the world to lose more than $100 billion (!!!), as confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records in a blog post.

Musk is present as an owner of Tesla in two ways. Firstly, he is a direct shareholder, and secondly, through the Elon Musk Revocable Trust. Last year he had to sell some shares due to the acquisition of Twitter, but the trust fund held these. The last time he sold about 9,000 of his shares was in December 2021, and since then, he has maintained an unchanged 620,086. By the end of 2021, Musk had about 178 million Tesla shares in total, and in November 2021, his net worth exceeded $300 billion, thanks to the Hertz announcement (they had reached an agreement with Tesla). We wouldn’t rule out him selling about 4 million shares just to have the meme number of 420 million shares.

Musk owns 42% of SpaceX. In the latest funding round, the company was valued at $137 billion, of which Musk’s assets are $57.5 billion, while Tesla’s, considering its $113 share value, is $47.9 billion. The two totals $105.4 billion, and Forbes estimated Musk’s highest net worth in November 2021 was $306.4 billion. So the $100 billion loss could be as much as $201 billion, indeed beating the previous record set by Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son when the Dotcom balloon burst in 2000 (when he lost $58.6 billion).

Last year, the weakening Chinese economy and rapid interest rate hikes hurt investor sentiment. The money put into Twitter ($44 billion) didn’t help Tesla: the company’s shares have plunged 68% in the last 12 months, and the fact that there was a 2% rise the previous week doesn’t mean anything. That drop has also outpaced a 30% fall in the NASDAQ stock market, but General Motors (-41%), Ford (-47.2%), and Toyota (-21.2%) can’t be proud either. Even electric car companies didn’t escape (Lucid Motors: -85%, Rivian: -80%, Canoo: -84%), and only China’s Li Auto, founded in 2015, was lower than the NASDAQ’s fall (-24%).

Congratulations to Musk. What kind of flop would he perform if he was in the gaming industry?

Source: WCCFTech