[imagesource: Flickr / Steve Jurvetson]

Publicly, at least, Elon Musk has always given the impression that he doesn’t care much about being the world’s richest person.

Other than poking fun at his space rival Jeff Bezos, he’s laughed at all those zeros being attributed to his name and spoken often about how he lives a simple life.

I’m not so sure that a guy with an ego like his isn’t at least a little taken with the title he has held pretty much uninterrupted since the tail-end of last year.

Perhaps he’s keeping an eye on the Forbes real-time billionaire tracker, then, because it’s very much neck and neck with number two.

This screenshot is correct as of 8AM on Thursday morning:

Oof – less than a billion dollars in it. At least Bezos is languishing down in fourth.

CNN reports that there was actually a moment yesterday when Musk did drop to second place:

Musk dropped to the second spot on Forbes’ list of “Real-Time Billionaires,” putting the Twitter and Tesla CEO behind Bernard Arnault, CEO of French luxury brand LVMH, maker of Louis Vuitton luxury goods and Hennessy cognac…

“The two men’s fortunes are nearly the same – separated by just $200 million – so it won’t be surprising if they continue to flip flop in Forbes’ rankings of the world’s wealthiest”…

[Forbes] said that Arnault’s ascent is because LVMH’s stock is mostly flat this year, while Musk has experienced a “dramatic collapse of Tesla’s share price,” which is down 56% in 2022.

In November of last year, Musk’s wealth peaked at around $320 billion.

We should note that the above figures are only as Forbes calculates them. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index shows Musk with a greater lead over Arnault in second:

Either way, his wealth has shrunk significantly over the course of the year.

It remains to be seen whether Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (and his unusual approach to encouraging advertisers) affects the value of his other companies in the long run.

[sources:forbes&cnn]