Elon Musk is not as wealthy as Mark Zuckerberg for the first time since 2020

For the first time since 2020, the bitter rival billionaires have shared the third-richest person in the world title, with Mark Zuckerberg surpassing Elon Musk on Friday.
As recently as early March, Musk was rated first on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, when Reuters reported that Tesla Inc. had cancelled plans for a less costly vehicle, shares slumped 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 worth 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 is Zuckerberg’s first time within the top three on Bloomberg’s list of the world’s wealthiest individuals since November 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 now worth $180.6 billion.
The reversal of the wealth disparity between Musk and Zuckerberg—which peaked at $215 billion in November 2021—shows how big tech, especially artificial intelligence, has supplanted once-hot electric car stocks.
With a 34% decline in share price this year, Tesla is the poorest performer in the S&P 500 Index. It has been severely impacted by the worldwide decline in demand for EVs, intensifying competition in China, and manufacturing issues in Germany. In contrast, Meta’s revenue 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 spat between Musk and Zuckerberg has been going on for a while, and it became more intense when Meta introduced Threads, a social networking platform that rivals Musk’s X. Last year, the two even sparred over the possibility of a cage fight. Reviving the notion on X, Musk, 52, said he would battle 39-year-old Zuckerberg “anywhere, anytime.”

After a Delaware court 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 richest two people on Bloomberg’s wealth list are Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., and Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury conglomerate. Their respective fortunes are $207.3 billion and $223.4 billion, respectively.