Elon Musk’s finances dramatically nosedived by $13 billion in just 24 hours after the entrepreneur suffered a string of business blunders.
On the same day, the SpaceX founder’s blockbuster rocket launch ended in a catastrophic fireball, his electric car company, Tesla, reported disappointing first quarter results, with shares falling by 9.75 per cent and earnings plunging by over 20 per cent.
Elon Musk’s failure to launch also extended to his recent purchase of Twitter, as he sparked backlash after finally following through with his threat to remove legacy verified blue ticks.
The billionaire’s plummeting net worth was hardest hit, however, by Tesla’s poor returns, and his $13 billion drop was his biggest loss of the year so far.
The billionaire’s plummeting net worth was hardest hit, however, by Tesla’s poor returns, and his $13 billion drop was his biggest loss of the year so far.
Despite his disastrous day, Elon Musk still has a net worth totalling $164 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. His wealth ranks him second in the world’s rich list, only behind French luxury brand mogul Bernard Arnault.
According to an internal email seen by the outlet, Elon Musk told his Space X employees that he’s optimistic about the venture, despite his high-profile rocket launch going up in flames.
The biggest rocket to ever take off, the 395-foot behemoth was comprised of a Super Heavy booster and Starship, but just four minutes after launch at 9.33 ET, the rocket dramatically exploded, abruptly terminating its first orbital takeoff.
Space X has claimed that it intentionally triggered the flight termination system to destroy the rocket after the Super Heavy craft failed to separate, which started causing an uncontrollable death spin before it exploded.
Despite the unideal optics of exploding the rocket as thousands of people watched from the ground in south Texas, NASA, Elon Musk and Space X have lauded the takeoff as a triumph after fulfilling their main goal of lifting the Starship off the launchpad.
But Elon Musk will have a more difficult time asserting success with his recent Tesla quarterly report after the electric car giant’s shares plunged almost 10 per cent on Thursday.
The decline came just a day after the company also reported a more than 20 per cent dip in net income, compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Elon Musk sparked concern among analysts when discussing the poor filings, which saw the company make a net income of $2.51 billion for the first quarter of 2023, a 24 per cent drop from the previous year.
The billionaire said on an earnings call after the report that they’ve taken a view that pushing for higher volumes and a larger fleet is the right choice, versus a lower volume and higher margin.
Elon Musk also admitted that it was difficult to say what the margin would be before Tesla’s declining bottom line becomes ominous.
While most of his net worth decline is reportedly tied up in his giant stake in Tesla, Elon Musk experienced further setbacks in his latest unpopular decision with Twitter.
Ever since acquiring the company a year ago, the billionaire has threatened to remove blue tick verification, and after receiving a muffled response to his ‘Twitter Blue’ rollout, Elon Musk finally followed through on Thursday and rid the site of ‘legacy’ ticks.
The decision was widely panned online, especially by those who lost their verification, with megastars including Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian now finding themselves without their prized blue ticks.
But the fact is, he’s ready to put everything on the line for the advancement of our race, or is he? People like Elon Musk don’t actually care about advancing us unless it’s on his terms and as a planet, we are just collateral damage, things to be experimented with whilst he flaunts his wealth with costly ego trips to see what else he can get away with, and celebrities who are upset about losing a blue tick need to reconsider their life priorities.
Elon Musk will of course bounce back because it’s what successful people do.
He might play the village idiot but he’s far from that. The rocket build was the first of its type and only a test run. The science behind it was enormous and there were of course going to be failures before it could be a success, and he knew that he would lose money.
Should Elon Musk be praised for his efforts with this spacecraft? It is remarkable but do we really want to know what’s up there or could it even be dangerous to find out? And there will be incidents when pushing boundaries, but I’m sure that was factored into the cost of this undertaking.
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