Bernard Arnault overthrew Tesla chief Elon Musk as world's richest

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has lost his spot as the world's richest person just two days after he had reclaimed the title. Musk briefly topped the global wealth list earlier this week, when his net worth reached an estimated $187.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the world's richest people on a daily basis.

Musk lost his top spot a day after Tesla Inc's shares fell about 7% on Thursday as Elon Musk's four-hour presentation failed to impress investors who were expecting an announcement on affordable electric cars. The fall in shares resulted in a drop of Musk's net worth by nearly $2 billion. His net worth settled at around $184 billion, after a dip of $1.91 billion on Thursday.

With his $186 billion fortune, French billionaire and Louis Vuitton CEO Bernard Arnault reclaimed the top spot from Musk.


Over the course of the past year, Elon Musk had ruled the billionaire world when Tesla shares climbed nearly 100% due to investor demand and growing customer interest in discounted Tesla models and their sales. But in December, Arnault unseated Musk when Tesla's share price fell by 65% owing to a number of factors. Between November 2021 and December 2022, Musk's net worth fell by over $200 billion, which is regarded as one of the largest losses of personal wealth in recent history.

Following the rapid decelerating value of Tesla shares early in 2023, the company witnessed its worst year ever on Wall Street last year, after a loss of nearly $700 billion due to investor apprehensions as a result of the long term effects of Covid 19 on China's economy and his rather contentious takeover of Twitter, the popular microblogging site.

Musk however seems to be taking the news in stride when he made light of his somewhat chaotic finances. He joked in a Twitter post, that he acquired the world's largest non-profit for $44 billion.


In November, last year Musk tweeted about the fact that the microblogging site had lost nearly $4 million a day.

Over the course of the last year, Twitter has also undergone a number of twists and turns, following back-to-back layoffs where over 50% of its workforce was fired over a series of month. Overall, nearly 200 people have reportedly lost their jobs as part of the most recent layoff at the company.

The micro-blogging site is going through some major turns and changes and has even bid adieu to more than half of its global staff due to the back-to-back layoffs. Just after Twitter took over, CEO Elon Musk fired more than 75 per cent of its workforce. The job cuts continued and, according to a recent report by The New York Times, Musk again fired around 10 per cent of the company's workforce. The company has slashed its workforce from 7,500 employees down to about 2,000 in recent months.

Meanwhile, as for the pyramid of world's richest people, Arnault and Musk are followed by Jezz Bezoz, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in the top 5 richest people. Indian business magnate Mukesh Ambani is currently listed at number 11 holding USD 79.9 billion of wealth.