Elon Musk, who held the title of the richest person in the world for a long time, became the biggest loser in history at the end of 2022.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the net worth of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has reached $137 billion and has dropped to the second place in the list of the richest people in the world after Bernard Arnault, the French entrepreneur (with a fortune of $162 billion). .
While Mr. Musk’s net worth reached $340 billion at its peak in November 2021, Bloomberg recently reported that he lost nearly $200 billion of his wealth, which is an unprecedented figure in history.
Most of Mr. Musk’s lost fortune has been affected by a 65% drop in Tesla’s stock price in 2022. This drop occurred following the decrease in demand for Tesla products due to the successful entry of other automobile companies into the electric vehicle market. Because of this, Tesla failed to meet its sales targets in 2022 and was forced to reduce its production in China.
Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter not only did not help to increase his personal wealth, but forced Mr. Musk to sell $23 billion of his shares to Tesla.
Some of Tesla’s shareholders believe that Elon Musk spends a lot of time expressing himself in the virtual space after buying Twitter, and this has weakened his role as the CEO of Tesla and his social standing. Of course, Mr. Musk, rejecting this claim, emphasizes that after the purchase of Twitter, there has not been the slightest problem in his full role in the management of Tesla.
Although Tesla’s stock price is likely to rebound and Mr. Musk will once again become the world’s richest person, his reputation as a genius entrepreneur has suffered almost as much damage as his fortune in 2022.
