The Guinness World Records have announced that the billionaire has broken the record for the largest loss of personal fortune
We already knew it, but now it’s official: Elon Musk is the biggest loser ever.
He is undoubtedly a loser in the sense that he is the kind of man who thought it would be hilarious to begin his tenure as Twitter CEO by taking pictures of himself strolling into the company’s HQ with a sink, and posting them with the caption “let that sink in!”. He is a loser in that he named his child after an aircraft. He is a loser in that his attempts at making memes are painfully, viscerally, unfunny (even though his fans – primarily chronically online men who unironically describe themselves as ‘edgelords’ – will religiously comment variations of “you sir have won the internet today!” under every single mid joke he posts).
But now he is also a loser in a more literal sense – according to the Guinness World Records, he has broken the record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history. Forbes assessed that Musk has lost a total of $183 billion since November 2021, although Bloomberg believes the figure could actually be closer to $200 billion. This brings his net worth down to around $137 billion.
The Guinness World Records organisation has acknowledged that it is impossible to accurately determine exactly how much money Musk has lost, but they maintain that it’s evidently much more than the previous record for the largest loss of personal fortune. The previous record was set by Japanese tech investor Masayoshi Son, who suffered a $58.6 billion loss in 2000 – less than half of Musk’s estimated loss.
Musk’s fortune peaked in November 2021 at $320 billion. But since then, Tesla shares have plummeted and his $44 billion splurge on acquiring Twitter was ultimately not a great idea, leading to his net worth taking a serious hit. As a result, Musk has also lost his status as the world’s richest man – the title now belongs to Bernard Arnault, the LVMH founder who owns an estimated $190 billion.
Obviously, most of us will never even be worth just 1 per cent of Musk’s current fortune, even after he’s lost $183 billion. He’s so rich he probably didn’t even notice he lost so much – and he’s still worth 12 figures anyway. But whatever. There’s some small comfort that the history books will show that at one point in time, Mr Elon Reeve Musk was literally the biggest loser in the world.