Experts have explained why Elon Musk’s net worth has plummeted by a whopping $102 billion in just two months.

The richest man in the world has seen a huge hit to his wealth in recent weeks.

And one financial expert has lifted the lid on why the Tesla boss is experiencing such a drop.

Elon Musk is the unelected head of DOGE (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

While we’ll keep our tiny violins to one side for now – after all, the mogul is hardly experiencing the depths of financial woes, Musk has seen his bank balance take quite the hit recently, with his net worth dropping by around 24%.

According to a report by Entrepreneur, this is due to a plummet in Tesla share prices, which have dropped from $404 to $263 this year.

And there could be a simple explanation for the downturn in value, according to experts.

Recently, Musk has taken center stage in the Trump administration after campaigning for President Donald Trump’s election win and subsequently being appointed as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While technically not a government department, DOGE is purported to act as an outside advisor to the president on federal spending.

Although, concerns have been raised over Musk’s access to confidential data in the Treasury payment system and his close proximity to government seems to have ruffled a few feathers within Tesla too.

Tesla share prices have plummeted (Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said, as per Barrons: “While the DOGE/Trump Musk iron-clad partnership has created major brand worries for Tesla … we estimate less than five percent of Tesla sales globally are at risk from these issues.

“We expect Musk will better balance his time between DOGE and Tesla/SpaceX over the course of 2025.”

Musk became the CEO of Tesla back in October 2008, succeeding Ze’ev Drori, who became vice-chairman before exiting the company two months later.

Under the mogul, the company has launched a handful of well-selling electric vehicles, including the Cybertruck, which first began production in November 2023.

In the US, a top-spec Cybertruck will set you back by anything from $74,000 to $94,000, according to Car Wow.

Although, Tesla shareholders have been publicly venting their thoughts on the billionaire now splitting his time between various job roles.

One shareholder even demanded on X, formerly Twitter, that Musk share ‘five things he’s done for them this week’.

The jibe appeared to use Musk’s own words against him as it referenced a controversial email sent out by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which demanded federal employees justify their paychecks.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has begun an appeal process to restore the $56,000,000,000 pay package from the electric car company that he claims was denied in a ‘legal error’.

Despite being undeniably the richest man in the world, Elon Musk continues his crusade for more money by pushing for an ‘unfathomable’ pay package from Tesla that he claims he is rightfully owed.

Awarded all the way back in 2018, this particular pay package resulted in major growth for the electric car manufacturer, as per Reuters, but was ordered to be rescinded by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick through Delaware law proceedings.

Musk has filed an appeal after his claim to an ‘unfathomable’ Tesla pay package was denied (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Chancellor McCormick indicated that the staggering pay package was “unfathomable” and unfair to shareholders, as directors were ‘beholden’ to Musk as CEO, alongside accusations that Tesla withheld key information from investors before they successfully voted to approve the pay package.

Musk has now launched his own appeal to McCormick’s decision, claiming instead that multiple legal errors were made in the application of the ‘entire fairness’ legal standard.

His legal representatives argue that Chancellor McCormick incorrectly determined that the Tesla directors that approved the pay package were conflicted in their business efforts, and that her assessment of the company’s failure to disclose information was a fault.

What remains critical about this particular pay package is it’s relevance to the current stock price of Tesla, even with a rapidly falling valuation over the past few weeks despite a push of support from President Trump.

The pay package, if successfully awarded, allows Musk to purchase roughly 303 million stock options in the company at around $23 each, which is essentially 10% of the most recent $230.58 closing price on Tuesday (March 11) night, and pales in comparison to the highs of around $492.77 at the end of last year.

Having access to this pay package would significantly increase Musk’s net worth and control over Tesla, despite stock value drops (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Musk’s purchase price if awarded these stocks would be around $6,969,000,000 – which is around just 2.2% of his total current net worth – but if he sold it at that $230.58 closing price he’d earn himself $69,865,740,000, which would boost his net worth by 20%.

Conversely, Musk will likely feel as if he’s lost significant value due to the fact that Tesla is significantly lower than it’s all-time high on the stock market, and if he had indeed held this pay packet at the $492.77 evaluation then his net worth would have almost doubled, increasing by $149,309,310,000.

This is quite a different approach compared to key rival Sam Altman, who currently holds no stock options for OpenAI and only receives a $76,000 yearly wage from the company, and in addition Musk has threatened to move his efforts elsewhere and procure development outside of Tesla if he cannot increase his stake in the company.

Elon Musk is under fire after re-posting a shocking tweet claiming Hitler did not kill millions of people.

While we know that Elon Musk says his ‘mind is a storm’, there are continued questions about what’s actually going on up there. The controversial owner of X hadn’t been afraid to speak his mind even before he took over Twitter in October 2022, but since rebranding it, he’s been allowed to let his so-called ‘free speech’ run free.

There’s been a mass exodus of celebrities and members of the public from this ‘toxic’ environment, where anything now seems to go.

As Elon Musk continues to post and repost his thoughts, he’s accused of being chronically online. Even though the public opinion toward him looks like it’s starting to impact his net worth (despite still being far and away the world’s richest man), it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop making his feelings clear.

Just when it looked like some people were starting to forget the whole ‘my heart goes out to you’ debacle where Musk was accused of performing a Nazi salute, he’s now posting about Hitler on X.

Protests against Elon Musk continue around the world ( Pacific Press / Contributor / Getty)

With stocks wavering and viral ad campaigns still referring to Musk as ‘Hitler’, one Tesla building in Germany was even hijacked with the slogan, “Heil Tesla.” If you want to distance yourself from all of the comparisons, it’s probably best not to share posts that try to paint the Führer in a good light.

While not Musk’s own words, he’s once again gone viral for sharing a post that says Soviet revolutionary Joseph Stalin, former Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong, and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. The post instead says, “Their public sector workers did.”

Considering Hitler was in power during the Holocaust, where some six million Jewish people were murdered and another five million non-Jewish people lost their lives, the backlash to Musk resharing these musings has been immediate.

Responding to the post, the President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has released a statement condemning its content. Posted on the official site, the statement from AFSCME President Lee Saunders refers to a ‘heinous and incendiary tweet’ and says: “America’s public service workers – our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians – chose making our communities safe, healthy and strong over getting rich.

“They are not, as the world’s richest man implies, genocidal murderers. Elon Musk and the billionaires in this administration have no idea what real people go through every day.

“That’s why he’s so willing to take a chainsaw to people’s jobs, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare.”

This latest post once again sees the world’s richest man making light of Hitler’s atrocities, and in the aftermath of the inauguration celebration faux pas with his ‘gesture’, he claimed the media was unfairly trying to portray him as Hitler. Back then, Musk went on to mock the situation with puns like, “Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations,” “Some people will Goebbels anything down,” and “Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!”

Why Musk shared this post is unclear, although it comes at a time when he’s trying to slash federal spending and show public sector workers the door as part of his Department of Government Efficiency cuts.

The Musk family continues to be controversial, with Elon and Errol Musk proving to be as divisive as ever.

As well as being the world’s richest man, Elon Musk finds himself in a new position of power thanks to his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

That’s not the only reason he’s in the news, with him potentially having two new children revealed in the past two weeks, wielding a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and lurking in the background of Donald Trump pictures.

One of his biggest controversies involved accusations he performed a ‘Nazi salute’ at President Trump‘s January 20 inauguration celebrations. There’s been backlash from Tesla owners and Musk’s own daughter, but defending his son, Errol Musk thinks it’s all a misunderstanding.

Speaking to Al Arabia, Errol Musk says that Elon was struggling to get through his inauguration speech and was trying to look charming.

Discussing the situation, Errol Musk referred to his son as a ‘terrible’ public speaker who apparently “has a lot to learn.”

Saying that he also struggled with public speaking when he first started, Errol Musk continued: “I know him very well, that he was struggling to get through his little speech as fast as possible and to try and look as charming as possible as he could, you know, but he’s.

“He struggles. He’s not. He hasn’t reached the incredibly smooth level of people like yourself, who are years of experience, can talk very well.”

As for the controversial gesture, Errol added: “It was not a Nazi (salute). It was an international salute that we’ve had for maybe the last 10,000 years, more, perhaps.

“And the old German Hail Caesar, of course, obviously emanated from, no doubt from the Persians, the Sumerians and so on. It simply meant, my right hand is empty. I do not carry a weapon.”

He goes on to bizarrely claim that other political leaders have pulled off the same gesture, echoing an X post that shows Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris with their arms in the air.

Errol Musk concluded: “Kamala Harris doing exactly the same thing. Nobody seemed to be bothered with it when. When they did it. And whereas Elon was a thrusting out of his arm.

“There’s his actual, you know, sort of like this, which is more like the original Hitler one or something. You know, the. The. The Hail Caesar one was like this, you know, and so on. No, no, it was nonsense. But. But somewhat comical that they picked it up like that, so it’s a bit funny.”

Errol Musk’s defence of his son comes after he’s previously branded him a ‘bad’ father. Elon’s dad spoke about the death of the billionaire’s first son and claimed that his children were left with nannies too much.

Elon and Errol Musk have something of a strained relationship, although the latter comes to his son’s defence at the most unexpected times.