Despite Twitter only being valued at a third of what Elon Musk bought it for, the CEO and tech tycoon has just reclaimed the crown of richest man in the world.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, Musk’s net worth recently ticked up to $US192 billion edging out Richard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, who has a net worth of $US187 billion. As CNN Business reports, the two have been duking it out for months, with Musk snagging the title in February before Arnault took it back this past April with a net worth of over $US200 billion. The outlet reports that Arnault’s wealth fell this week due to a drop in LVMH’s stock — the company is known for producing Louis Vuitton goods and Dom Perignon champagne. Jeff Bezos, executive chairman and founder of Amazon, places in third at $US144 billion.
Bloomberg’s calculations say that Tesla is a huge chunk of Musk’s wealth, with $US83.8 billion of the CEO’s total net worth coming from the publicly traded EV company. This is followed by SpaceX, of which Musk lays claim to $US48.9 billion and Twitter, which makes up $US8.08 billion of Musk’s worth. The Boring Company is Musk’s least lucrative asset at $US3.33 billion, while miscellaneous assets bring the total up to $US192 billion.
Also, you can now change video playback speed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2023
Musk took back the title during a bout of restraint, during which the centibillionaire didn’t tweet for 48 hours — inadvertently sending the message that he’s the most valuable when he’s silent. This 2 day window is apparently the longest he could stay away from the platform this year: As Bloomberg reports, Musk has tweeted every single day of 2023 up until May 29, just before he began his visit to China. Twitter is famously banned in China, and the chief twit using a VPN to tweet his ramblings wouldn’t be a good look while meeting with government officials. The last time Musk took a Twitter detox was in June 2022, when he was desperately pushing the eject button after expressing his desire to purchasing the company.
Musk and Twitter entered into an agreement to sell the platform to the world’s richest man in April 2022. The two parties then engaged in a will they/won’t they over the summer, in which Musk began to second guess his decision. Nevertheless, he persisted and Musk took over Twitter in November 2022 to mixed results. In less than a year, the platform has noticeably taken a tumble in quality, but Musk has named a successor as CEO in Linda Yaccarino.
Anyway, the moral of the story is obviously think before you tweet.