Elon Musk's fortune drops nearly $60 billion, but he's still the richest person in the world

Since Mr. Trump took office, Musk's fortune has dropped by nearly $60 billion, but he remains the richest person in the world.

By 2024, Musk's fortune will increase by nearly $250 billion, mainly due to the surge in Tesla shares. However, the US President's import tax policy has caused Musk's fortune to decline. At the close of trading on February 11, the US electric car company's stock fell 6.3%. The reason is believed to be that Chinese rival BYD announced a plan to cooperate in developing self-driving car technology with DeepSeek - a low-cost AI model that has recently caused a fever in China.

BYD said it would offer a system similar to Tesla's Autopilot on most of its new models, raising concerns that the US electric carmaker is falling behind the competition.

American billionaire Elon Musk in Beverly Hills, California, May 6. Photo: AFP

Tesla shares have corrected for five consecutive sessions, losing 17% of their market value, causing the company's capitalization to decrease by $200 billion.

Musk's fortune has dropped by nearly $60 billion since Trump took office. But he remains the world's richest person, followed by Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg ($253 billion) and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($252 billion).

Musk was the world’s richest person last year, adding more than $200 billion to his fortune. His fortune skyrocketed in late October, thanks to his support for President Donald Trump during the election campaign. Musk’s fortune also increased in part because SpaceX’s valuation was pushed to $350 billion.

Musk has a diverse fortune. According to Forbes, he currently owns 12% of Tesla and 42% of aerospace company SpaceX. The billionaire also owns more than 70% of social network X and about 60% of xAI, the artificial intelligence startup he founded.

According to Intellectual Property