Elon Musk lost $33.9 billion in one day. Here’s what he could have bought instead of tweeting into self-immolation.
The world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, lost $33.9 billion (per Bloomberg) amid a full-blown public tantrum toward US President Donald Trump on Thursday that started with a disagreement over US debt and legislative priorities before escalating into not-thinly-veiled accusations of pedophilia.
Roughly $20 billion of Musk’s disappearing wealth comes from the cratering of shares of Tesla, which had its 11th-worst day on record yesterday.
$33.9 billion is a big number. If you can easily put it in perspective, congratulations; please invite me on one of your mega yachts. But for the rest of us...
That’s roughly as much as the Dallas Cowboys, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Rams, and New York Yankees franchises are worth combined, per Forbes’ 2024 annual list.
If, instead of tweeting, Musk just decided to send someone random all the money he’d end up losing on Thursday, that person would be the 55th-richest person in the world, per Bloomberg’s RICH <GO> list.
You could buy nearly 500,000 Cybertrucks. It’s unclear when you’d be able to take delivery, but that would definitely help Tesla’s forward earnings estimates inflect higher.
Musk has shown an interest in mixed martial arts. He’d probably have more flexibility to schedule a scrap with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (and line up a ref and some judges willing to score the bout favorably) if he bought TKO, the UFC owner with a market cap of about $33.4 billion.
$33.9 billion is nearly enough to account for all the cumulative net income that Tesla has generated over its history as a publicly traded company ($35 billion).
Musk-Trump isn’t the most costly divorce we’ve seen, though. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos settled with Mackenzie Scott for about $38 billion.
