Five billionaires lost record-breaking amounts in 2022

At the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999, Bill Gates became the first person worth $100 billion–a record that remained untouched until 2017, when it was matched by Jeff Bezos, who just three years later became the first to cross the $200 billion mark, in August 2020.

Musk, meanwhile, has claimed another title of his own: the first person ever to lose more than $100 billion in a single calendar year, according to Forbes.

Musk ended 2022 worth an estimated $147 billion–a record $125 billion drop from the end of 2021, as shares of Tesla fell by 65 per cent–almost all of that since Musk announced his $44 billion Twitter takeover in mid-April. His fortune was down another $10 billion on Tuesday to $137 billion, $183 billion less than his $320 billion peak in November 2021.

But Musk wasn’t alone in having a terrible year.

In a year of unprecedented wealth destruction, four other billionaires fell by record sums as tech stocks tanked.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos lost $85 billion in 2022, as shares of his e-commerce giant fell by 50 per cent - 17 percentage points worse than the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Meta Platforms’ (formerly Facebook) Mark Zuckerberg dropped $77 billion, as shares of his social media company tumbled by 64 per cent. And Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, meanwhile, each slipped by nearly $45 billion apiece, as shares of the company now known as Alphabet sank by 39 per cent.