When Elon Musk surrendered the title of richest person on Earth late last year, he didn’t just lose a tiny bit of money. He lost a ton of it. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index (as caught by CNN) the Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter honcho has, in just over a year, lost over $200 billion of his once staggering wealth. That means he’s lost more than anyone in modern history.
At his peak, in November 2021, Musk was worth $340 billion. Nowadays his three main companies are worth a total of $137 billion. What happened? Well, for one thing, the majority of Musk’s fortune is tied up in Tesla, his once popular electric car company. The company’s stock has plummeted; December was its worst month, last quarter was its worst quarter, and 2022 was its worst year.
One reason for the sinking interest in Tesla is competition from other automakers, who’ve been turning to electric cars as well. Surely not helping is that Musk’s antics since buying Twitter, which have found him embracing the far right, who would never be caught dead buying one of his Tesla cars, while alienating progressives, i.e., his potential customers.
As Musk’s fortunes have sunk, he’s been tweeting through it, even dropping strange jokes about his various failures. Meanwhile, he’s fired janitors at Twitter HQ, forcing employees to supply their own toilet paper. If he can still afford a Netflix account, he can drown his sorrows by watching a very popular movie that semi-accidentally makes fun of him.
(Via CNN)