Elon Musk sets Record for largest fortune loss in history; beats Softbank's Masayoshi Son

Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made it into the Guinness World Records for the largest loss of personal fortune in history. The SpaceX founder has lost nearly $182 billion since November 2021, according to Guinness World Records, citing Forbes. Some other reports have also claimed that his losses would be close to $ 200 billion.

While it is difficult to ascertain the exact loss, it is beyond doubt that Musk has surpassed the previous record of $ 58-6 billion fortune loss set by Japanese investor & SoftBank Billionaire Masayoshi Son in 2000.

At a peak of $320 billion in 2021, Musk's net worth dropped to $138 billion as of January 2023. The downtick was primarily due to the lacklustre performance of Tesla's stock.

After the market closed on December 30, Musk tweeted, "Long-term fundamentals are extremely strong. Short-term market madness is unpredictable."

Bernard Arnault replaces Musk as richest man

Bernard Arnault, whose family owns leading French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), recently replaced Musk as the world's richest man. His net worth is estimated to be $190 billion.

Tesla stocks are witnessing a slump since Musk brought Twitter for $44 billion. His acquisition of the microblogging platform sparked the biggest Tesla stock sell-off since the automotive firm went public in 2010.

While Musk has lost more money than any human in history, he is still the second richest person in the world.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Elon Musk's tweet indicating that Tesla might allow some electric car owners who are testing the Full Self-Driving system to disable an alert reminding them to keep their hands off the steering wheel has got the attention of US safety regulators.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Tesla for more details regarding the tweet.  Tesla has been conducting deta-testing Full Self-Driving (FSD) using owners who are being actively minotored. 

However, despite FSD, Tesla on its official website claimed that cars cannot drive themselves.  Tesla using FSD can navigate roads itself in multiple cases, but specialists say the system can make mistakes. "We're not saying it's quite ready to have no one behind the wheel," CEO Musk said in October last year.