Elon Musk has lost a bigger fortune than anyone in history

New York
CNN
—

Elon Musk’s wealth destruction has become historic.

The CEO of Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX and Twitter is worth $137 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, well enough for second place on the world’s richest list behind LVMH (LVMHF) chairman Bernard Arnault. But at his peak in November 2021, Musk’s net worth was $340 billion.

That makes Musk the first person to lose $200 billion in wealth, Bloomberg reported last week.

Most of Musk’s wealth is tied to Tesla (TSLA), whose stock has fallen 65% in 2022. Demand for Tesla (TSLA) has weakened as competition in electric vehicles from automakers established surged last year. The company fell short of its growth targets and cut production in China.

Evidence of waning car buyer interest in Teslas emerged last month after the company announced a rare sale in a bid to clear inventory. Tesla has offered two rebates for buyers taking delivery of a vehicle before the end of the year, initially offering a rebate of $3,750 and then doubling the rebate to $7,500 with two weeks remaining in 2022.

Investors were rattled by the discounts, sending the stock down 37% in December.

Critics have long wondered if Tesla was worth the trillion dollar valuation it had at the start of 2022. At its peak, Tesla was worth more than the 12 largest automakers on the planet combined, despite a fraction of their sales . Tesla ended the year with a valuation of $386 billion – still much larger than its automaker rivals but far smaller than the tech titans – Apple (AAPL), Microsoft, (MSFT) Google (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) – with which it was compared a year ago.

Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter also didn’t help Tesla’s stock or Musk’s personal wealth. Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, has sold $23 billion worth of Tesla stock since his Twitter interest became public in April.

His constant tweeting and increasingly erratic behavior, particularly after taking over as CEO of Twitter, has angered Tesla investors who want Musk to pay more attention to his much larger and more valuable company. . Musk defended himself against criticism, saying he hadn’t missed a major Tesla meeting since taking over Twitter.

Tesla’s stock could rebound and Musk could once again become the richest person in the world. But Musk’s reputation as a genius suffered serious damage in 2022 – almost as much damage as his personal wealth.