Elon Musk’s coffers got a little lighter on Thursday after his net worth plummeted by $12.6 billion, according to Bloomberg‘s Billionaires Index, Musk’s biggest drop in wealth so far this year. This fall follows a fairly tumultuous 24 hours for SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, three of the biggest companies under Musk’s leadership.
Tesla stock price fell 9.8% on Thursday after disappointing first-quarter results
Tesla released disappointing first-quarter results Thursday morning, reporting a nearly 20% decline in the company’s gross margins. The EV maker has made several aggressive price cuts to its vehicle lineup in recent months, a move that boosted sales despite the struggling EV market, but ultimately impacted its margins. overall beneficiaries. Tesla’s stock price fell 9.8% to $162.99 as markets closed Thursday. Musk’s 13% stake in Tesla accounts for the largest share of his (now) $163.9 billion net worth.
On the same day, SpaceX’s Starship integrated spacecraft experienced a “rapid and unplanned takedown” over the Gulf of Mexico – which is just a fancy way of saying it exploded – four minutes into its first test flight. Starship had managed to clear the launch pad before it began to spin uncontrollably, then burst into a ball of flame before the stages separated. Musk owns a 42% stake in SpaceX and plans to attempt another Starship test flight in “a few months.”
And then there is Twitter. The musk did good his promise to remove blue checkmarks from legacy accounts on Thursday, verification logos sputtering between page reloads with the technical prowess we’ve come to expect from the platform before finally disappearing altogether. Twitter CEO has replaced legacy verification – something he once called unfair”system of lords and peasants— with one that requires users to pay an $8 monthly subscription to Twitter Blue.
Advertisers and media organizations are now watching the situation with impatience, fearing that the removal of old verified checkmarks could increase misinformation. Problems have already arisen with accounts buying Twitter Blue to impersonate notable individuals, brands and government departments – Eli Lilly’s share price fell nearly 5% in November this year latest after a fake account impersonating the pharmaceutical company tweeted that “insulin is free now”. “Such impersonations will likely be much easier now that so many companies have lost their verified status.
Musk remains the second richest person in the world despite this latest drop in net worth, behind French tycoon Bernard Arnault. In fact, that recent loss doesn’t even eclipse the billionaire’s $26.8 billion increase in wealth this year following Tesla’s earlier 33% stock price rebound in January.
