Elon Musk, at three hundred and thirty billion dollars, was the richest man
in the world. But then Tesla's stock has plummeted more than sixty five percent
since the start of twenty twenty two. He's no longer the world's richest man,
and his ev company is on track for having its worst year in the
stock's history. By the end of twenty twenty two, Musk lost more than
half his net worth. On paper, on any given day, he could
be the world's richest man, or he could be the world's second richest man.
Or you know, he might fall because the share value of Tesla falls.
Most of Musk's wealth is tied up in shares of his businesses. That
means volatility in his company's stock and valuations can directly sway his net worth.
In the last few months, Musk has recovered some lost ground. His net
worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, is now estimated at about one
hundred and sixty billion dollars, but the trajectory of his key businesses has some
investors concerned. Here's how a volatile stretch for some of his companies is impacting
Musk's net worth. Elon Musk's wealth really balloon during the pandemic, but in
the past year so we've seen it go on a kind of a wild roller
coaster. The Wall Street Journal reached out to Elon Musk for common but he
did not respond. Since he took over Twitter roughly six months ago, there's
been lots of questions about his overall management style and wondering if perhaps some of
the magic has been rubbed off. Musk is a serial entrepreneur. He made
twenty two million dollars selling his first startup in nineteen ninety nine, an internet
business called zip two, then bent most of that money on a startup PayPal.
When eBay bought PayPal, he made one hundred and sixty five million dollars
and used that to found SpaceX and become an early investor in Tesla. He
bought Twitter in October twenty twenty two for forty four billion dollars, funding some
of the purchase by selling thirty nine billion dollars worth of his test last shares.
It's been a rocky a few months since its takeover. Twitter has never
been a company that's made a lot of money, oftentimes being unprofitable on an
annual basis. But he takes control and immediately he says he needed to start
making dramatic changes. Soon after the purchase, Musk fired top executives, laid
off thousands of employees, and said advertisers cutting ad spending had led to a
massive drop in revenue. He thinks, he's, in essence rights sized the
ship, but now it's a private company, so we don't know exactly what's
going on in there. Musk's ambitions for Twitter are a mix of content,
communication, and commerce, similar to popular Chinese social media platform we Chat.
All this, Musk says, will help turn Twitter into a company worth two
hundred and fifty billion dollars. But for now, Twitter is valued around twenty
billion, and I remember, twenty billion dollars is dramatically less than what he
acquired the company for the deal that was around forty four billion dollars. So
just imagine his wealth going like this, and it's just been a wild ride
to watch Elon. Musk's main source of wealth is Tesla. As of late
April twenty twenty three, Tesla was worth about five hundred billion dollars and Musk
owns about thirteen percent of a company. Tesla grew significantly in twenty twenty up
to a peak value of one point two trillion dollars in twenty twenty one,
but it fell significantly last year, down to a round three hundred and ninety
billion, and all that fluctuation has affected Musk's personal wealth. While Tesla's stock
has rebounded slightly in twenty twenty three, investors have a few concerns the amount
of time Musk spends focused on Twitter and Tesla's price cuts that have reduced profit
margins on each car itselfs well, Tesla is profitable and it's projecting a dramatic
growth into the future. The question is how dramatic and how profitable. Musk
also envisions a future where Tesla's continue making money for the company after someone initially
purchases the car, for example, charging for software updates, and that's a
big bets in a lot of ways, an industry upending business model. Tesla
has not yet shown the ability to deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology, and so
he's essentially telling the world this is coming and we're going to make a lot
of money down the road. In Wall Street's not so sure about that.
And then there's SpaceX. Musk founded the company in two thousand and two with
money he got from selling his stake in PayPal, and while SpaceX doesn't release
financials, last year, the company was valued at a round one hundred and
forty billion dollars. As of twenty twenty two, a trust associated with Elon
Musk owned forty two percent of the company. SpaceX executives recently said it's making
money off of its Falcon nine rockets and Dragon spacecraft, and executives expect Starlink
SpaceX division that provides high speed broadband internet with satellites, to begin making money
this year too. Tesla is where the bulk of his wealth is at this
point, but SpaceX is increasingly looking like it's going to be a juggernaut onto
its own and might be where the next kind of tranche of huge valuation comes
from. Musk also owns three other companies, Neuralink, Boring Company, and
x Ai. They're all privately held and their finances are unclear the other early
stages, you know, the bulk of elong Musk's time at this point is
in three places, Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter. These other startups
are of interest to him, but he would even say that they are far
down on the list of priorities in any given day. Musk's wealth has traditionally
been tied up in his businesses, and he's been labeled as a cash poor
billionaire because he has to borrow against his shares for living expenses. One of
the things about Elon is he's become richer and richer is that it gives him
the whereworthal and the ability to chase these kind of big ideas that he has,
whether it's trying to make a humanity a multiplanetary species, or make electric
cars cool, or by that shiny object that he now has, which is
Twitter. A stumble now could kind of change his legacy, could perhaps overshadow
his past accomplishments. Yet he's still showing a huge appetite for risk.