Musk just crossed the trillion-dollar mark two weeks ago.
Now he's back under $950 billion - a $165 billion drop in 14 days.
But even after losing more than the entire market cap of companies like McDonald's, Musk is still the world's richest person by a mile. The tech sell-off that hammered SpaceX and Tesla shares is a real test for the two companies that built his fortune. But the numbers show that for now, the distance between him and everyone else hasn't really changed.
Let's break down what happened.
The fall
SpaceX went public at $135 a share on June 12. It opened trading at $150, then ran to $225.64 on June 16. The IPO debut pushed Musk's net worth past $1 trillion for the first time, making him the world's first trillionaire.
Then the floor dropped out.
A broader tech sell-off hit growth stocks hard after investors got cold feet about the long-term payoff of AI. SpaceX fell 16% on a single day, June 22, erasing about $240 billion from Musk's net worth. The next day, Tesla slid nearly 6%, piling on the pain.
All told, his fortune shrank from about $1.11 trillion to $946 billion in under two weeks, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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The bigger picture
That's an eye-popping number in a vacuum. But step back and the real story is how far ahead Musk still is.
Larry Page sits in second place with a net worth of $296 billion. Sergey Brin is at $275 billion. Jeff Bezos is at $257 billion. Musk is worth more than all of them combined - by a comfortable margin.
The sell-off didn't narrow the gap. It just reminded everyone that when your wealth is tied to two high-growth companies that investors are repricing in real time, paper billions disappear as fast as they showed up.
What to watch
SpaceX remains a dominant force in the space industry, with reusable rockets that have changed the economics of launches and deep ties to NASA and national security missions. Tesla is still the most valuable car company on the planet. The underlying businesses haven't broken.
But the AI narrative that juiced shares in 2025 and early 2026 is losing steam. If that shift continues, the trillions might not come back as quickly as the first one arrived.
A $946 billion net worth is still a number no one has ever touched before this month. But with the market in recalibration mode, it's a fragile perch.
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