Elon’s Wealth Takes A 13 BILLION Dollar Hit After SpaceX Rocket Blows Up

Elon Musk’s wealth dramatically nosedived by $13 billion in just 24 hours after the entrepreneur suffered a series of business blunders. 

On the same day the SpaceX founder’s blockbuster rocket launch ended in a disastrous fireball, his electric car company, Tesla, reported disappointing first quarter results, with shares dropping by 9.75 percent and earnings plummeting by over 20 percent. 

Musk’s failure to launch also extended to his recent acquisition of Twitter, as he sparked backlash after finally following through with his threat to remove ‘legacy’ verified blue ticks.

Regardless of his disastrous day, Musk still has a net worth totaling $164 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. His fortune ranks him second in the worldwide rich list, only behind French luxury brand mogul Bernard Arnault.

According to an internal email seen by the outlet, Musk told his Space X employees that he is optimistic about the venture, despite his high-profile rocket launch winding up in flames.

The largest rocket to ever take off, the 395-foot behemoth was made up of a Super Heavy booster and Starship.

But just four minutes after takeoff at 9:33 ET, the rocket dramatically exploded, unexpectedly putting an end to its first orbital launch.

Space X has stated that it purposefully activated the flight termination system to destroy the rocket after the Super Heavy craft unsuccessfully disconnected, which started causing an uncontrollable death spin before it was exploded.

Despite the lack of idealistic optics by exploding the rocket as thousands of people looked on from the ground in south Texas, NASA, Musk and SpaceX have cheered the launch as a success after accomplishing their primary goal of lifting the Starship off the launchpad.

But Musk will have a tougher time claiming success with his recent Tesla quarterly report, after the electric car giant’s shares dropped nearly 10 percent Thursday.

The fall came just a day after the company also reported a more than 20 percent drop in net income, in comparison with the same quarter a year ago.

Musk sparked worry among analysts when talking about the poor filings, which saw the company earn a net income of $2.51 billion for the first quarter of 2023, a 24 percent decline from the previous year.

‘We’ve taken a view that pushing for higher volumes and a larger fleet is the right choice here, versus a lower volume and higher margin,’ the billionaire said on an earnings call after the report.

Musk also acknowledged that it was ‘difficult to say what the margin will be’ before Tesla’s declining bottom line becomes ominous.