Technology
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Elon Musk has reportedly lost more than $100 billion in less than a year. But try not to feel too sorry for this multi-billionaire; he’s still the richest human on planet Earth, maintaining over $50 billion more than the second richest human, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Hard times, eh?
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Musk’s fortune fell to a mere $209.4 billion last Thursday, almost a 35 percent drop since his peak of $320.3 billion on November 4, 2021, according to Forbes. As of October 26, his coffers have raised to $219 billion, but he’s still over $100 billion off of his former high point.
Musk recently sold nearly $7 billion in Tesla shares to finance his much-hyped Twitter deal. He is finally in the last stages of signing the deal after a long and bumpy ride, and even Musk himself has admitted he’s overpaying for the social media platform.
However, his relative fall of fortune is inseparable from the wider economic downturn rearing its head. There are a number of tell-tale signs that the world is heading into yet another recession and many tech stocks have fallen across the board this year.
Telsa’s new car factories in Texas and Berlin are already losing billions of dollars and many are predicting that Musk's high-cost cars won’t be selling as strongly if a recession does hit.
Musk isn’t the only obscenely rich man to feel the pinch of the world’s economic troubles. The personal wealth of Meta overlord Mark Zuckerberg has plummeted by $71 billion in 2022.
Once again, it’s not like dear old Zuck will be worrying about putting the heating on this winter. He still has a total net worth of $54 billion, but he now stands as the 20th richest person on Earth when he was 4th at the start of the year.
