Elon Musk Lost The Title Of World's Richest Man, But Not For Long

Elon Musk — who took over the title of the world's richest man from Jeff Bezos in September 2021 — was relegated to the second spot for a brief period of time on December 7, 2022. However, it was not Jeff Bezos who retook the number one spot from Musk this time around. Instead, according to Forbes — which maintains a real-time billionaires list — Musk lost his pole position to French Billionaire Bernard Arnault, albeit only for a couple of hours. For the uninitiated, 73-year-old Arnault is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of LVMH — the luxury goods company behind brands like Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Givenchy.

At the time of drafting this article, Musk and Arnault claimed a net worth of around $184.9 billion and $184.7 billion, respectively. In comparison, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has fallen behind and is "only" the fourth person on the Billionaires list with a net worth of $111.7 billion. Jeff has also been overtaken by little-known Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, now the third richest person on the planet with a net worth of $134.8 billion.

Musk reportedly lost the number one title at around 10:50 AM EST Wednesday before regaining the top spot at around 12:30 PM. Given that there is a difference of less than $1 billion between Bernard Arnault and Musk as of now, there is a good chance of many such flip-flops happening in the next few weeks, Forbes reports. Interestingly, even though Musk has lost more than $100 billion in net worth in the past year because of Tesla's tanking stocks, he is still holding on to the top spot.

The past two years have been a roller coaster ride for Elon Musk, who has seen his fortune rise in the period. Less than three years ago, in March 2020, Musk was worth just $24.6 billion — nearly $90 billion less than Jeff Bezos — who had already breached the $100 billion mark. By August 2020, Bezos zoomed past the $200 billion figure.

Elon Musk's jump in wealth was even more dramatic. From $24.6 billion in March 2020, Musk's wealth skyrocketed to breach the $100 billion mark in September 2020. Thanks to Tesla's rallying stocks, he overtook Jeff Bezos a year later — even breaching the $300 billion mark in November 2021. Despite these incredible gains last year, 2022 has been a year of massive losses for Musk. 2022 also became the year in which Musk paid $44 billion to complete the controversial acquisition of Twitter.

Twitter has lost close to half its value since Musk first announced his intention to buy the platform. Forbes claims that a significant reason for a downward trend in Tesla's shares was Musk's decision to sell more than $19.3 billion worth of Tesla shares to finance the acquisition of Twitter. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how the battle for the title of the world's richest man between Musk and Arnault pans out in the next few weeks.