Topline
An 11% Tesla stock slide wiped out billions of dollars from its headline-grabbing CEO Elon Musk’s fortune, while the net worth of several other Silicon Valley veterans swelled – here’s this week’s biggest movers on Forbes’ billionaire list.
Elon Musk got $14.5 billion poorer this week.
Key Facts
Musk lost $14.5 billion in the week ending Friday, sending his net worth down 7% to $187.9 billion, by far the greatest slide on a gross and percentage basis this week among all billionaires.
The tumble came as Tesla investors soured on the company’s profitability prospects as a quarterly report Sunday revealed vehicle inventory spiked early this year, but Musk remains by far the wealthiest person in the U.S. and second-richest man in the world.
LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, holder of the illustrious world’s wealthiest crown with a $223.1 billion fortune, joined Musk as one of this week’s biggest losers, shedding $2.7 billion as shares of his luxury empire slipped.
Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page headlined the week’s winners, as both Brin and Page’s respective fortunes grew by roughly $3.5 billion as shares of Google parent Alphabet soared 5%.
Oracle chairman Larry Ellison (up $2.2 billion) and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (up $1.4 billion) were also among the top gainers as shares of their respective companies climbed 3% and 2%.
Key Background
Musk, who bought Twitter at a $44 billion valuation last year and subsequently became its CEO, had a particularly dramatic week at the helm of Twitter, axing the site’s old verification process, propping up the meme cryptocurrency dogecoin by featuring the token’s logo across Twitter and lashing out at NPR and the New York Times. Though Musk’s controversial “antics” with Twitter dragged down Tesla’s share price last year, the electric vehicle giant’s latest slide is unrelated to the behavior of its leader, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. “Tesla investors have now become immune to the Musk Twitter drama which remains background noise on the stock,” Ives wrote Wednesday in an email to Forbes.
Surprising Fact
Shares of Tesla are down 52% since April 4, 2022, the day Musk revealed he took a 9.2% stake in Twitter. That’s the largest decline of any company listed on the S&P 500 with a market capitalization over $15 billion, according to FactSet data. Musk’s net worth is down more than $100 billion since last April, while Tesla’s market capitalization sank from nearly $1.2 trillion to less than $600 billion.
Tangent
Forbes knocked roughly $700 million off of its net worth calculation for former President Donald Trump this week, largely thanks to a heavy discounting in the estimated value of Trump’s stake in his social media company Truth Social. Trump is worth an estimated $2.5 billion, making him the 1,246th-richest person in the world.
Further Reading
2023 World Billionaires List (Forbes)
Trump’s Net Worth Plunges $700 Million As Truth Social Flops (Forbes)
Elon Musk: Warren Buffett Should Replace Yellen As U.S. Treasury Secretary (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/08/this-weeks-biggest-billionaire-loser-elon-musks-fortune-plunges-15-billion-as-other-tech-titans-rake-it-in/