Being Tesla’s largest shareholder, Elon Musk saw his net worth battered and hurt last year as TSLA shares lost 65% of their value. Such was the remarkable drop in Musk’s net worth that Guinness World Records actually noted that the Tesla CEO had set the record for the largest loss of personal wealth in history.
Musk’s net worth has increased by about $10.6 billion since taking the stand in court on Friday, according to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Thanks to this, Musk’s net worth is back up to $145 billion, allowing him to close the gap with Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who took over the title as the world’s richest man last December.
Interestingly, Musk’s net worth has recently risen again. That’s not unlike the net worths of most of the world’s richest 500 individuals, who have seen some improvement even after a challenging 2022.
While Musk generally doesn’t care much about his net worth, the CEO’s recovery bodes well for electric vehicle maker Tesla’s momentum. Musk is, after all, Tesla’s largest shareholder, and thus, most of his net worth is tied up with the EV company. Tesla’s 65% drop last year, for example, was partly driven by Musk’s decision to offload some of his TSLA shares to help him acquire and run Twitter.
Whether he’s the richest man in the world or not, Musk attracts a lot of attention. More recently, Musk took the stand in a securities fraud lawsuit over a tweet posted in August 2018 that claimed he had received funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share pre-split. Tesla shares soared 13.3% after Musk’s “Funding Secured” tweet.
As noted in the Bloomberg News report, Musk said he did not own enough shares to take Tesla private at the time, and thus, needed help completing the deal. Musk eventually walked away from the take-private deal for Tesla, but not before TSLA shares experienced much volatility in the market.