Musk, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla, fell to second place on Forbes’ list of “Real-Time Billionaires” on Thursday, trailing Bernard Arnault, the head of French luxury retailer LVMH, which produces Louis Vuitton luxury goods and Hennessy cognac. Musk’s worth is currently estimated by Forbes at $183.6 billion, just shy of Arnault’s $186.2 billion wealth.
Forbes pointed out on Wednesday that Musk has faced a “dramatic collapse of Tesla’s share price,” which is down 56% in 2022, but Arnault has risen due to LVMH’s shares being largely flat this year. The way Musk interacts on Twitter with right-wing influencers may be having an effect on Tesla stock prices. According to Forbes, Musk’s wealth peaked in November 2021, when he was valued at $320 billion.
In order to pay for his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk just sold off nearly $4 billion of Tesla stock. Twitter is currently facing problems like layoffs and apprehensive advertisers concerned with the platform’s future. When the news of Musk’s purchase of Twitter first broke earlier this year, he had already sold blocks of Tesla shares for a total of $15.4 billion.
However, estimating Musk’s overall wealth is challenging because a large portion of his wealth is invested in his private businesses, such as the internet and rocket company SpaceX, the tunneling company The Boring Company, and the company Neuralink, which seeks to implant computer chips in people’s brains.
Despite the losses, Musk is still far ahead of second- and third-placed billionaires Jeff Bezos and Gautam Adani of India, each of whom is worth an estimated $135 billion.
Musk holds a commanding first-place position on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a net worth of $171 billion. With a net worth of $166 billion, Arnault is in second place. Bloomberg estimates that Musk has lost around $100 billion so far this year. Each day after the market closes, that list is updated.