Elon Musk is no longer the wealthiest person in the world thanks to the plummeting price of Tesla shares, which dragged the serial entrepreneur into second place.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and Twitter, saw his net worth overtaken by that of French billionaire Bernard Arnault on Monday, according to data from Forbes.
Arnault is the chairman and CEO of luxury goods maker LVMH, and has a net worth of $187.1 billion, Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List showed on Tuesday morning.
Musk, meanwhile, lost $7.4 billion on Mondayaround 4% of his total net worth, according to the ranking, which Forbes says puts his fortune at $181.3 billion.
Musks wealth is largely tied to Tesla shares, which shed around 6.3% of their value by the closing bell on Monday. At the beginning of the year, Forbes valued Musks net worth at $304.2 billionmeaning his fortune has plummeted by $122.9 billion, an amount that exceeds the wealth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who sits in fourth place on Forbes ranking.
The $7.4 billion hit to his net worth on Monday is the equivalent wealth of the 299th spot on Forbes billionaires list, a place currently held by Arizona Beverages co-founder Don Vultaggio.
Musk was propelled to the top of Forbes global wealth ranking thanks to Tesla shares gaining more than 4,000% in the decade after the firms IPO, while his other companies, like SpaceX, gained traction and secured investment. In 2013, his net worth was $2.7 billion, according to Forbes.
However, investors have taken a tentative approach to Tesla in the wake of Musks $44 billion acquisition of social media platform Twitter, resulting in a volatile few months for the electric carmakers stock.
Tesla shares are now valued at 60% less than they were at the beginning of the year. By Tuesday morning, Tesla was trading at 30 times its projected earningsits lowest everwith analysts telling Bloomberg the price could dip even lower.
Indian business man Gautam Adani became the third richest person in the world earlier this year, with Forbes top five rounded out by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
Musk still has Bloomberg
Bloombergs Billionaires Index, which uses slightly different methods to track the wealth of the worlds richest people, still has Musk in its top spot, with Arnault following incredibly closely behindthe LVMH chiefs net worth is just $1 billion lower than Musks in Bloombergs ranking.
According to Bloombergs figures, Musks fortune has been depleted of $103 billion so far this year. Thats almost equivalent to the wealth of Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, who has a net worth of $103.9 billion and is currently ranked the seventh richest person in the world by Forbes.
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