With a staggering fortune of $223.4 billion, Frenchman Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is the richest man in the world. He is followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with a fortune of $207.3 billion.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Elon Musk, 52, is on Friday after a Reutersreport dropped to fourth place. The news agency reported that Tesla would rely on robotaxis instead of cheaper electric cars, which Musk denies. This news followed the still fresh information that Tesla’s vehicle deliveries fell in the first three months of this year.
According to this, the fortune of the boss of Tesla, X and SpaceX has shrunk by $48.4 billion this year. The fortune of Meta boss Marc Zuckerberg, 39, has grown by $58.9 billion. This means that Zuckerberg has moved into the top three in the Bloomberg ranking of the wealthiest people for the first time since the end of 2020. At that time, his fortune was $105.6 billion, Musk’s wealth was $102.1 billion. Now Musk has a net worth of $180.6 billion; for Zuckerberg it is 186.9 billion US dollars.
To Bloomberg, that’s a sign that the once-popular electric vehicle stocks are now being trumped by much that has to do with artificial intelligence in the broadest sense. Tesla shares have fallen 34 percent this year. Their value has been hit by sluggish global demand for electric vehicles, growing competition in China and production problems in Germany. Meta’s value, on the other hand, rose 49 percent thanks to strong quarterly results and market euphoria over the company’s AI initiatives.