Musk added $875M a day over past year, then lost $500B in weeks

Elon Musk's fortune has become the most volatile in recorded history, with two new reports capturing both sides of a staggering wealth trajectory: a $320 billion gain over 12 months and a nearly $500 billion collapse in less than two months.

The Rise: $875 Million a Day

An analysis published by financial research firm BestBrokers found that Musk added $320 billion to his net worth between July 2025 and July 2026, equivalent to roughly $875 million in new wealth every single day. The figures were drawn from the Forbes real-time billionaires list using archived snapshots taken exactly one year apart.billionaires+2

The primary engine was the June 12 initial public offering of SpaceX, which priced at $135 per share and raised approximately $75 billion in the largest IPO in history. Shares surged on their first day of trading, pushing SpaceX's market capitalization above $2 trillion and briefly vaulting Musk past the $1 trillion mark for the first time.cnbc+2

The broader AI-driven rally across technology also lifted other fortunes. Dell Technologies ↗ 0.17% founder Michael Dell recorded the second-largest one-year increase among the world's wealthiest, adding $107.6 billion over the same period, while DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng saw his fortune surge from $1 billion to $39.5 billion, a 3,850% increase.billionaires

The Fall: $500 Billion in 53 Days

The gains proved fleeting. According to Forbes data cited in a separate analysis, Musk's net worth peaked at approximately $1.32 trillion on June 16 before falling to $823.6 billion by August 8, a decline of roughly $496.4 billion, or 37.6%, in 53 days. Forbes separately noted his wealth briefly reached an intraday record of approximately $1.45 trillion on June 16, meaning the drop from the absolute peak was even steeper.coinpaper

SpaceX shares, trading on the Nasdaq ↗ 0.99% under the ticker SPCX, fell from an intraday high above $225 on June 16 to around $109.50 by late July. The stock has since recovered toward its IPO price, closing at $133.11 on August 7. Tesla ↗ 0.32% shares also declined during the period, adding further pressure.facebook+2

Paper Wealth in Perspective

The scale of the decline is roughly comparable to the combined net worth of Jeff Bezos and Larry Page, which Forbes valued at about $511.4 billion in late July. As of early August, Musk's fortune sits between roughly $675 billion and $780 billion depending on the tracker, with Bloomberg's Billionaires Index placing it near $777 billion and Forbes at approximately $744 billion.coinpaper+1

Nearly all of that wealth remains tied to equity stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and X, meaning the number shifts with every trading session. NDTV reported that Musk's estimated wealth fell as low as $690 billion last month, the lowest since December 2025. He remains, by a wide margin, the world's richest person.billionaires+1