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American billionaire Elon Musk lost $79.7 billion on Thursday as shares of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX fell for a second straight session, accounting for almost half of a $185 billion wipeout in the fortunes of the world's richest people.
Tesla closed down 10.77% in New York on Nov. 5 and SpaceX fell 9.05%, cutting Musk's net worth to about $785 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He was worth about $865 billion a day earlier. He remains the world's richest person by a wide margin.
The 500 people on the index lost $185 billion between them on Thursday, the 14th-biggest one-day drop since the ranking began in 2012. Musk's share of that was about 43%. Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang lost $15.1 billion and fell out of the top 10, and Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison lost $10.1 billion.
Two days, $450 billion
The two companies that make up most of Musk's fortune have now lost about $450 billion in market value since the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, split roughly evenly between them. Tesla, which closed at $398.50 on Election Day, traded near $342 late on Thursday afternoon. SpaceX fell from $141.31 to about $125, below the $135 price at which it went public in June. It is still valued at about $1.7 trillion.
The selling went well beyond Musk's companies. The Nasdaq Composite had its worst day in 18 months as investors dumped chipmakers and other stocks tied to the build-out of data centers for artificial intelligence. Nvidia fell 9.3%, its steepest drop since January 2025, and Oracle lost 6.9%.
Investors are betting that Democratic gains in Tuesday's elections, in Congress and in states such as Texas, could slow the construction of data centers that has driven much of this year's rally in technology shares. Musk's companies are deep in that trade. Tesla and SpaceX are planning a $100 billion chip plant in Texas, and SpaceX has agreed to lease about $40 billion of AI chips from an entity managed by Apollo Global Management Inc.
Washington turns
Musk is also facing closer political scrutiny. He gave more than $445 million to Republican causes in the 2026 cycle, the most any individual has spent in a single U.S. election. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has said Democrats will use subpoenas "to go after Elon Musk."
Thursday's losses came on top of a steep fall on Wednesday, the first trading day after the vote, when Tesla and SpaceX dropped even as the broader market rallied.
Musk, 55, is chief executive officer of both Tesla and SpaceX. Most of his wealth is tied to his stakes in the two companies, so moves in their share prices change his net worth by tens of billions of dollars in a single session.
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