Elon Musk’s wealth dropped by $20.3 billion on Thursday after Tesla Inc. issued a warning that it could need to keep slashing the price of its electric vehicles.
The reduction in net worth to $234.4 billion, the seventh-largest decline in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, further closes the wealth gap between Musk and Bernard Arnault, the two richest persons in the world. Musk’s wealth continues to be around $33 billion greater than that of Arnault, chairman of luxury goods manufacturer LVMH.
Musk wasn’t the only billionaire in US technology having a bad day. Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison, former Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms Inc., and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Alphabet Inc. all saw their combined net worth fall by $20.8 billion as the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 lost 2.3%.
Stocks of the Austin-based Following a warning from the business about further blows to its already dwindling profits, Tesla fell 9.7% to $262.90 in New York, the most since April 20. Automotive gross margin suffered as a result of months of markdowns; it hit a four-year low in the second quarter. Tesla will need to keep decreasing costs if loan rates keep rising, according to company CEO Musk on Wednesday.
Musk, 52, gets the majority of his wealth from his ownership of Twitter and Space Exploration Technologies in addition to his share in the EV company. As shares of Tesla rose 136% this year through Wednesday, his wealth surged by approximately $118 billion.
The 74-year-old Arnault’s net fortune increased by $39 billion to $201.2 billion this year. In 2023, the value of LVMH’s stock will increase by 26%.
