Elon Musk lost his trillionaire status on Tuesday, less than two weeks after becoming the first person in history to achieve the milestone, as a brutal global tech rout erased billions from his fortune.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued Musk’s wealth at $957bn (£727bn) on Tuesday, down from $1.11tn just 14 days earlier. The reversal followed a sharp retreat in shares of his rocket company, SpaceX, and his electric vehicle venture, Tesla, as technology stocks broadly tumbled on growing doubts over the long-term profitability of artificial intelligence.
“Elon Musk lost his trillionaire status as SpaceX shares plunged amid a global tech rout.”
Musk had made history on 12 June with the highly anticipated public market debut of SpaceX on the Nasdaq exchange. The blockbuster initial public offering was priced at $135 per share and opened at $150, valuing the rocket and satellite giant at more than $1.77 trillion. Because Musk owned roughly 42% of SpaceX, the listing instantly propelled his paper fortune past the $1 trillion mark.
By 16 June, surging investor enthusiasm drove SpaceX shares to a peak of $225.64, pushing Musk’s total net worth to a peak of $1.32 trillion. But concerns over capital spending, AI infrastructure costs, and stubborn interest rates triggered a widespread tech sell-off that hit high-flying giants such as Nvidia, Intel, and AMD particularly hard.
SpaceX shares bore the brunt of the correction, plunging more than 30% from their mid-June peak to trade around $156. On a single turbulent Monday, 22 June, a 16% single-day drop erased an estimated $240bn (£182bn) from Musk’s personal balance sheet. The following day, Tesla shares slid nearly 6%, compounding the financial damage. Musk owns about 12% of Tesla’s outstanding shares.
“For a stock like SpaceX, a lot of decision making might have been emotional and based on the anticipation of huge leaps forward in space exploration and utilisation, but investing should be something treated with clear eyes and patience, even when such huge numbers are involved,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell.
Despite the loss, Musk remains the world’s richest person, and his wealth still dwarfs that of his nearest rivals. But his trillionaire status is uniquely vulnerable due to the extreme concentration of his fortune: SpaceX represents nearly 80% of his total net worth, with Tesla accounting for most of the rest. With restrictions on insider sales from the SpaceX IPO expected to lift in late July, analysts warn that further volatility may lie ahead.