Elon Musk took a $15 billion hit to his net worth following the debut of Tesla’s first-ever robotaxis.
The Tesla CEO, who owns about 13% of the company, saw his net worth plunge to about $240 billion following last week’s announcement, which seemed to deliver a hit to Tesla’s stock. Yet he’s still the world’s richest person as of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Tesla’s stock fell from around $240 per share before the event to $217 on Friday, nearly a 10% decrease. The stock was trading up 1% at $220 as of Tuesday afternoon.
During the Oct. 10 “We, Robot” event, Musk said Tesla’s Cybercab would be released before 2027 and cost an impressive $30,000. Yet, he admitted that he tends “to be a little optimistic with timeframes.” The company also unveiled an autonomous bus-like vehicle called a Robovan. And while several of the company’s humanoid Optimus robots were present at the event, they were actually being voiced and controlled remotely offsite.
Despite praise from some, including Tesla bull Dan Ives of Wedbush, other analysts were not as impressed with the announcement. Wells Fargo analysts led by Colin Langan wrote in a Friday note that the event succeeded in stirring up hype but was short of substance.
The Cybercab demos were conducted on a closed track in a well-controlled environment, the analysts pointed out. Meanwhile, Waymo is conducting 100,000 autonomous rides per week in major cities. The Optimus robots were a big step forward from previous iterations, yet the use case and economics are still not clear, the analysts added in the note.
“The presentation lacked many of the details people were looking for,” Langan told Fortune. “And the demos were very short and in a very low complexity environment.”
Musk has pulled squarely ahead of his super-rich counterparts on the billionaires list this year. With a $241 billion net worth as of Tuesday, he is more than $30 billion richer, at least on paper, than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s second-richest man. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg briefly surpassed Bezos earlier this month to become the second-richest person for the first time ever, but as of Tuesday, Zuckerberg had fallen just barely into third place with a net worth of $209 billion.
