Elon Musk, newly electrified by a rally in Tesla’s stock price on Monday, reclaimed the top spot on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
French luxury giant LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault became the world’s richest man back in December, pushing 51-year-old Musk into the second place slot, where he remained for more than two months. The SpaceX founder again rocketed to the top spot this week thanks to a nearly 70% surge in Tesla Inc.’s stock price this year.
As of Monday, Bloomberg estimated Musk’s net worth topped $187.1 billion while Arnault’s hovered around $185.3 billion.
Musk also tops the Forbes Billionaires list, but the two publications differ on who holds second and third place as well as how much each billionaire is worth. The Forbes list has Musk’s estimated worth at $219 billion, while Arnault is in third place with $158 billion and Amazon founder Jess Bezos takes second with $171 billion.
Musk’s reclaiming of the “world’s richest man” superlative comes after he suffered a precipitous drop in net worth in late 2022. He became the first person ever to lose $200 billion in wealth, according to the Guinness Book of World Records when his net worth dipped from some $340 billion in Nov. 2021 to $137 billion in Dec. 2022.
The bulk of Musk’s wealth is tied to Tesla, but stock prices for the electric vehicle company — of which he is the largest shareholder — took a tumble amid a broader market downturn, which also aligned with his tenuous Twitter takeover. The tech entrepreneur formally acquired the social media platform for $44 billion back in October, after months of trying to back out of the deal.
He is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla in addition to Twitter.