Two days after Elon Musk lost his spot atop the Bloomberg Billionaires’ list to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (and then to LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault), he nearly did the same with his place on the Forbes ranking of the global super-rich. Forbes noted that for a brief, agonizing moment, Musk was ranked outside the top two on its Real Time Billionaires List, for the first time since the summer of 2021. (Arnault is No. 1 by their measure, which is different from Bloomberg’s.)
Musk is nowhere near the poor house, still worth more than $196 billion, according to Forbes’ calculations. But that number has been steadily shrinking this year. Tesla is running into a lot of problems, whether they’re recalls or production delays from eco-terrorism or price wars with Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD. The company’s stock is down about 29% so far this year. Shares in the public companies behind Arnault and Bezos’ fortunes, on the other hand, are each up about 14%.
Even though Bezos hasn’t held the reins at Amazon for a few years, he’s still able to benefit from the strong sales that have buoyed the company’s stock price. Bezos has in turn pocketed the benefits by selling billions of dollars from his stake in the online retailer. And LVMH is riding China’s gradual economic reopening and the spending power of skincare-savvy tweens to better fortunes.
Besides the size of their massive hordes of wealth, Musk and Bezos also compete in a 21st century space race via their respective rocketship companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, and Musk’s position in that one is looking unsteady as well. Bezos’ company recently revealed plans to land a craft on the moon next year, which would be sooner than the former’s 2026 timeline that Musk is looking at.