New Delhi: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg passed Elon Musk on Friday to become the third richest person in the world. It is the first time since 2020 that arch-rival billionaires have held those positions.
As recently as early March, Musk was rated first on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, after Reuters revealed that Tesla Inc. had cancelled plans for a less expensive automobile, shares of the company dropped and Musk dropped to fourth place. (Musk refuted the allegations.) This came after reports earlier in the week that Tesla’s car sales decreased in the three months ending in March—their first dip year over year since the beginning of the Covid outbreak.
This year, Musk’s wealth has decreased by $48.4 billion, while Zuckerberg’s wealth has increased by $58.9 billion as Meta Platforms Inc. reaches new heights, setting a record on Friday. This marks Zuckerberg’s first time within the top three on Bloomberg’s list of the world’s richest people since Nov. 16, 2020, when Musk’s wealth was $102.1 billion and his was $105.6 billion. Zuckerberg is worth $186.9 billion, whereas Musk is currently worth $180.6 billion.
The reversal of the wealth gap between Musk and Zuckerberg—which peaked in November 2021 at $215 billion—shows how big tech, especially artificial intelligence, has overtaken the market for once-hot electric vehicle stocks. With a 34% decline in share price this year, Tesla is the worst performer in the S&P 500 Index. It has been severely impacted by the global decline in demand for EVs, intensifying competition in China, and production issues in Germany. In contrast, Meta has increased 49% as a result of the company’s exciting AI developments and solid quarterly profitability. On the S&P 500, it has performed the sixth best.
The competition between the two billionaires goes beyond money: The public dispute between Musk and Zuckerberg has been going on for a while, and it got more intense when Meta introduced Threads, a social media platform that rivals Musk’s X. Last year, the two even sparred about the possibility of a cage fight. Reviving the notion on X, Musk, 52, declared he would battle 39-year-old Zuckerberg “anywhere, anytime.”
After a Delaware judge invalidated Musk’s $55 billion Tesla compensation plan, his net worth may suffer much more. One of Musk’s biggest assets, the options from that compensation package, are still used by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to determine how wealthy he is. The top two people on Bloomberg’s wealth ranking are Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., and Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a luxury conglomerate, with fortunes of $207.3 billion and $223.4 billion, respectively.
