Heemang Parmar

Elon Musk has been knocked down a peg on the list of the world’s richest people, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg, ceding the top spot to European luxury fashion scion Bernard Arnault.

The new CEO of Twitter saw his wealth shrink in recent days as shares of his electric car company, Tesla, took a dip.

He is still, of course, inconceivably wealthy. Musk has a net worth of about $177 billion, second to Arnault’s roughly $189 billion, per Forbes.

Bloomberg made Musk’s No. 2 status official Tuesday, while Forbes did so Monday; both outlets maintain lists of individuals who have managed to hoard more money than every other person on planet Earth.

Like many executives, Musk is compensated in large amounts of stock, meaning that his net worth is partially subject to the whims of the market. He arrived among the richest of the rich after Tesla stock began to soar in 2020. The stock is currently trading at around $160 per share, down from a high of more than $400 in November 2021.

Some critics say that Musk’s interest in Twitter is at least partially to blame for Tesla’s decline. He appears determined to remake the social media giant into a welcoming home for once-banished right-wing extremists, and in the process he has fired around half the company while scaring off advertisers in droves.

The world’s current richest person, Arnault, heads up LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA., which owns the iconic handbag-maker included in its name, along with Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Tiffany & Co., Sephora and other global brands.