Elon Musk just lost his trillionaire status again after three days—but he says 'it’s not like it’s sitting in a bank account' anyway

Elon Musk hit trillionaire status, slipped out of it, and did the whole thing in three days. His net worth fell from a peak of $1.05 trillion on Tuesday to $987 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. That still leaves him the richest person in the world by a huge margin, but the swing shows how fragile the number is when it lives on top of stock prices.

The immediate trigger was SpaceX. Forbes says Musk lost $21 billion Wednesday morning after the company’s shares dropped when a report said SpaceX plans to raise $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips. Investors may have flinched at the implied spending and debt needs, even though the company is pouring money into AI infrastructure. SpaceX stock was down 3.5% and trading under $162 yesterday, while Tesla was also down more than 2%.

This wasn’t even Musk’s first trip to the top. He regained trillionaire status on Monday after SpaceX shares rose nearly 8% and Morgan Stanley analysts called the stock “cheap” at the day’s prices. Musk owns about 4.76 billion SpaceX shares, plus another 1.3 billion in unvested restricted stock, which pushed his net worth from $976.9 billion to $1.04 trillion. Then the rally faded, and so did the trillion.

Musk has been blunt that the number is mostly a paper story. In an interview with Peter Diamandis earlier this year, he said a trillion dollars is just a percentage of companies he built, not money sitting in a bank account. He’s also said that in 10 years his fortune may mean nothing at all, because AI could make money less relevant. That’s a bold take from someone who just spent a few days in a club most people will never come close to joining.