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.