Elon Musk no longer richest man in the world, lost more than $100 billion since January

Fifty-one-year-old billionaire Elon Musk has seen his fortune decrease by more than $100 billion since January. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk's net worth, at its peak, was $340 billion. His current net worth is only around $168.5 billion, dethroning him from the top spot of the world's richest people.

Elon had held the title of "richest man in the world" since September 2021, when he took over the title from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. However, the Tesla, Inc. CEO lost this title after the electric carmaker's stock dropped more than 50% this year.

At present, seventy-three-year-old Bernard Arnault, the chief executive officer of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH has claimed the title of the richest man in the world. He has a $171 billion net worth, 48% of which comes from his ownership of the fashion giant, as of writing.

Elon Musk's demotion is largely due to his highly controversial offer to take Twitter private for $44 billion. Though the billionaire tried to back out of his impulsive bid that reportedly stemmed from a "420" weed joke, he could not back out from their agreement and Musk was forced to offload more than $15 billion in Tesla shares to raise enough cash to fund the purchase.

In October, Musk closed the deal for Twitter with $13 billion in loans and a $33.5 billion equity commitment. Tesla investors started dumping their shares after witnessing Elon Musk's problematic business choices as Twitter's CEO.

His fortune took another substantial hit when his net worth dropped below $200 billion on November 8. The investors began losing faith in his commitment to Tesla as Elon seemed to be more preoccupied with Twitter.

Reuters reports that apart from Tesla and Twitter, Musk is also head of the rocket company SpaceX, an American spacecraft manufacturing company he started in 2002.