The EV maker has been the single biggest part of his ever expanding fortune for years. No more, as Tesla’s stock comes crashing down.
By Matt Durot, Forbes Staff
Elon Musk paid out more than $200 million to help get Donald Trump reelected in November. In the weeks following Trump’s victory, Musk more than made that back. In fact, he became the first person ever worth $400 billion in December, after private investors valued his startup xAI at $50 billion (up from $24 billion in May) and Musk’s rocket maker SpaceX at $350 billion (up from $210 billion in June). That same month, public shareholders drove Tesla’s market capitalization to an all-time high of $1.5 trillion.
Then things started to slowly unravel. Tesla’s stock hit a speed bump in early January, after the company reported weaker than expected deliveries for the fourth quarter of 2024. But Tesla shares started really recoiling on January 21, the day after President Trump’s inauguration, when Musk took over as head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Worries over Musk’s ability to run the car company while working around the clock figuring out ways to slash federal government spending have sent the stock crashing down 50% from its high.
“In a nutshell the word ‘balance’ has been missing with Elon Musk and his ability to run Tesla as CEO….while instead focusing all of his energy and time driving his DOGE initiative within the Trump Administration,” wrote Tesla bull Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities in a recent analyst report, while also noting that the EV maker’s numbers have been soft as of late.
On January 29, Tesla reported that its revenue grew a disappointing 1% to $97.7 billion during 2024, while its net income fell for the second straight year to $8.4 billion. Meanwhile, reports have emerged of dramatic declines in Tesla car sales in the first two months of 2025 in Germany, China and Australia, and analysts at JPMorgan recently cut their global deliveries forecast for the first quarter of 2025 to their lowest level since the third quarter of 2022. At the same time, protests against Tesla and Musk have erupted at Tesla dealerships across the US.
Perhaps it’s not much of a surprise then that Musk launched an official appeal a week ago of a ruling out of Delaware in January 2024 that voided the record-breaking Tesla pay package he was granted in 2018. The judge in the case ruled that Musk and Tesla failed to prove that the process underlying the award was fair due to conflicts of interest and Musk’s “control” over the board. Forbes has discounted the underlying stock options from the pay package (worth $65.3 billion as of Monday’s market close) by 50% pending the results of Musk’s appeal. Excluding those options, Musk owns a 12% stake in Tesla worth $97.8 billion, though he’s pledged more than half his shares to secure personal loans of up to $3.5 billion.
With Tesla crashing, SpaceX is now Elon Musk’s most valuable asset for the first time in five years. Forbes estimates that Musk’s 42% stake in his rocket maker is now worth $147 billion–nearly $20 billion more than his Tesla stock and options as of Monday’s market close. The last time Musk’s SpaceX stake was worth more than his Tesla stock and options in 2019, Musk’s entire fortune was only worth about $20 billion. SpaceX, which launches satellites, cargo and astronauts into orbit for government and commercial customers, grew its revenue by 51% to $13.1 billion in 2024, according to estimates by industry analysts Payload Space, with estimated revenue from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service nearly doubling to $8.2 billion.
While SpaceX and Tesla still make up more than 80% of Musk’s estimated $329 billion net worth, he also owns smaller stakes in xAI, X Corp (formerly Twitter), tunnelling startup Boring Company and brain implant firm Neuralink. Together those holdings add another $45 billion to Musk’s fortune.
Musk has acknowledged the “great difficulty” of juggling DOGE and his roles overseeing six different companies. Still, he hasn’t given up on his EV maker just yet, declaring in an X post last Monday that Tesla will “be fine long-term.” After all, despite its recent slump, the company’s stock is still up 46% over the last year, and Musk is still the world’s richest person.
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