Elon Musk recently lost an amount of money that’s so large it accidentally set a new record.
It’s a bizarre record, but it’s one that most of us would probably be happy to hold.
That’s because despite losing a fortune, he’s still the richest man on the planet.
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Elon Musk’s net worth peaked in November 2021, when it briefly hit $340 billion.
His net worth nosedived in 2022 and by January 2023, Musk had lost over $200 billion.
There are two main reasons behind this wild record.
Firstly, the stock market hasn’t exactly been looking great for the last 16-18 months.
And most of Elon Musk’s net worth is tied to Tesla.
Secondly, the Twitter deal had a snowball effect on Musk’s fortune.
The South African investor and engineer first announced he wanted to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share ($42-44 billion) in the spring of 2022.
He did a sharp 180 shortly thereafter, walking away from the deal citing Twitter spam and bot accounts as the main reason for his decision.
But just a few weeks later, Musk changed his mind again after Twitter ex-CEO Parag Agrawal threatened legal action against the business mogul.
Ironically – and perhaps not surprisingly – Agrawal was the first person to be fired by Elon Musk after the takeover.
Musk began dumping his Tesla shares to fund the Twitter acquisition and his controversial leadership style contributed to the drop in value of Tesla stock.
In addition to that, Musk has been attempting to change Twitter, now X, and make it profitable with a trial-and-error method.
This hasn’t gone down terribly well with the media, investors and, in part at least, Twitter users.
On his first day as CEO of Twitter, Musk walked into the Twitter HQ carrying a sink – literally.
He then fired a few top execs and 50 percent of the staff before announcing his intention to step down as CEO.
Musk famously shares polls on Twitter to ask users about crucial decisions about his businesses, always promising he will “abide by the results”.
Elon Musk’s net worth reached its lowest point in January, when he briefly became second-richest person in the world behind LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.
At the time of writing, Elon Musk has a net worth of $248 billion, chiefly because Tesla stock has been doing well ahead of the Cybertruck launch.
