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- Tesla CEO Elon Musk has dropped on Forbes’ rich list from first to second, behind Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, Forbes reported.
- Tumbling shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla on Monday chopped $13.5 billion off his fortune, according to Forbes’ calculations.
- Bezos has regained the top spot with a fortune of $182.1 billion, per Forbes’ estimates, compared to Musk’s $176.2 billion
- Musk takes a small salary from his companies, but has substantial stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
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After briefly topping Forbes’ rich list, Elon Musk has now fallen back to second place behind Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, after tumbling shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla on Monday chopped $13.5 billion off his fortune.
Musk became the world’s richest person on Thursday – a result of his fortune growing by more than $150 billion in a year.
But shares in Tesla fell nearly 8% on Monday, their largest one-day fall since late September. Based on estimates from Forbes, this pushed his total wealth down to $176.2 billion, compared to Bezos’ $182.1 billion fortune.
Despite Musk’s wealth loss, he still stands more than $20 billion above Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH and the world’s third-richest person, per Forbes’ estimates.
As of Tuesday morning, Musk still tops Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, where he has $194 billion compared to Bezos’ $183 billion. Its calculations take into account Musk losing $15.6 billion from Monday to Tuesday.
Though Musk takes a small salary from his companies, he has a roughly 20% stake in Tesla and a 48% stake in aerospace company SpaceX, as well as 57 million vested Tesla stock options, per Bloomberg.
Tesla had a booming 2020, selling nearly 500,000 vehicles, and its stock price rocketed 740% over the year.
His compensation package also awards him stock when Tesla achieves certain goals. That made Musk the highest-paid executive in 2020.
Musk, who is also known for his opinionated and at times cryptic tweets, posted an understated response after Bloomberg declared him the world's richest person on Thursday.
"How strange," he tweeted. "Well, back to work..."
In December, he told Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Insider's parent company Axel Springer, that he was selling all his possessions to fund a future colony on Mars.
He also sold several high-dollar pieces of property, including three neighboring homes in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.