Elon Musk Regains Title of World’s Richest Person as Tesla Shares Rebound

Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Elon Musk has reclaimed his position as the world’s richest man as the Tesla CEO’s net worth reached an estimated $187 billion this week, according to data tracked by Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In mid-December, Musk lost his top rank to French business magnate Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH, as shares in the car manufacturing industry declined.

While Tesla shares lost more than 50 percent value in 2022 and slid to their lowest level in nearly two years, shares for the electric vehicle maker rebounded this year and have since surged.

According to Bloomberg, Tesla stock is up by about 100 percent since its intraday low on Jan. 6, with each share currently trading at $207.63 per share. The increase is driven by a better economic forecast as investors reinvest in riskier growth stocks.

The latest increase allowed Musk, after the markets closed, to top Arnault’s fortune of $185 billion, per the daily ranking. The majority of Musk’s fortune is tied up in Tesla stock.

Although Musk’s fortune has once again risen notably since the SpaceX founder’s net worth declined tremendously, to about $137 billion in December, it is still quite lower than its peak of roughly $337 billion in November 2021.

Late last year, Musk officially broke the Guinness World Records title for the largest loss of personal fortune by anyone in history, losing approximately $200 billion in wealth, according to a Jan. 6th report published on the ultimate record-breaking authority’s website.

Besides Tesla, Musk also owns spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, Twitter, and Neuralink, which is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments.

Amid fluctuating Tesla shares, Musk is making cost cuts at Twitter, which he acquired last year for $44 billion. In November, Musk stated in a tweet that the microblogging website was losing more than $4 million a day.

In a tweet on Feb. 5, Musk said the social networking service is on the path to financially break even in 2023, as the company implemented several measures to boost declining revenues.

“Last three months were extremely tough, as had to save Twitter from bankruptcy, while fulfilling essential Tesla and SpaceX duties. Wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone,” Musk wrote. “Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!”

To increase revenues, Musk implemented a paid-in subscription service called “Twitter Blue” that adds a blue checkmark to an account and gives users additional features, such as allowing them to edit tweets within a 30-minute window, use custom app icons, bookmark tweets into folders, and so on.

Since Feb. 9, Twitter also started to charge for access to its Application Programming Interface (API), which is used to create third-party apps by developers.

“Free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers and opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things. Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly,” Musk wrote in a tweet on Feb. 3.

In January, Twitter auctioned off dozens of appliances, furniture, memorabilia, and other items from the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.

From NTD News.