Elon Musk Bags Guinness World Record For Having The Largest Loss Of Personal Fortune In History

Twitter owner Elon Musk is now the world record holder of the largest loss of personal fortune.

According to a report by the Guinness World Records, the multibillionaire lost close to $200 billion between November 2021 and the present. He is currently the second richest man in the world, after business magnate Bernard Arnault, due to the drop in his net worth.

The sharp decrease in Tesla stocks, of which he controls the majority, led to Musk's financial loss. His purchase of the social media site Twitter in October 2022 hastened the collapse even more.

While Tesla has been having difficulties, Musk's other company Space X has made significant progress toward its objective of launching one of its starship prototypes for its first space journey.

Read on to learn more.

Musk has set a new record as the individual with the largest loss of personal fortune in history.

WGN-TV noted a report from Guinness World Records, which cited that Forbes analyzed the tech mogul's wealth to have diminished by around $182 billion since November 2021.

Additionally, it mentioned that estimates from other sources place the sum closer to $200 billion. Regardless, the loss equals more than half of what he was thought to be worth in November 2021, when he was still the wealthiest man on the planet.

The financial magazine also stated that Musk's wealth has decreased from a high of $320 billion in November 2021 to $137 billion as of Tuesday. The loss led to the Tesla CEO easily surpassing Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son, who lost $58.6 billion during the dot com crash of 2000 alone, in the wake of his SoftBank shares plummeting.

Forbes noted that Musk's heavy net worth loss came after the shares of Tesla fell by 65% in recent times. The tech mogul is the largest shareholder in the company, which explains why he experienced a massive decline in his wealth.

The drop in his fortune comes in the wake of his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October. Musk had sold several billion dollars worth of his Tesla stock to acquire the social media platform.

He also received severe backlash following the purchase, as many seemed concerned about how he would run the platform.

French fashion and cosmetics mogul Arnault is now the world's wealthiest person, while Musk occupies second place.

Musk's controversial behavior on Twitter has made many Tesla investors concerned that he is not doing enough to navigate the car company back to its previous heights.

"The Cinderella ride is over for Tesla," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives recently penned, noting the concerns of stakeholders, per Yahoo. "Musk now needs to navigate the company through this Category 5 dark macro storm instead of focusing on his new golden child Twitter, which remains a distraction and overhang for the Tesla story/stock in our opinion."

In response to weaker demand for Tesla vehicles this year, the business has reduced costs for the Model Y and Model 3 in China, which is widely regarded as the largest auto market in the world. Reports have also suggested that more price reductions should be expected as Tesla tries to adapt to its new status quo and strategize to garner more customers.

While Tesla has been going through turbulent times, Space X, which also has Musk at the helm of its affairs, has been making giant strides toward sending one of its starship prototypes into space.

The Twitter CEO shared on the platform an update on how soon the world can expect to see Space X have its first orbital flight of Starship.

"We have a real shot at late February. March launch attempt appears highly likely," he said in a recent post, per MSN.

Between 2020 and 2021, Space X organized multiple high-altitude flights for its prototype, and all but one of the trials ended in explosions.

The only successful attempt occurred on May 5, 2021. Since then, several technical changes have been implemented in preparation for a possible flight to space next month.