Elon Musk may be riding the waves of Donald Trump’s presidency by flailing chainsaws around on stage and terrorising government employees via email, but that doesn’t mean all is fine and dandy for the tech billionaire.

In fact, the 53-year-old has recently seen his net worth plummet by $52 billion (£41 billion) since the start of 2025, due to a loss of market confidence in his businesses.

To you and I, £41 billion sounds like an inconceivable amount of money, but things move very differently in the world of the uber-rich and imaginary zeros of vale being added on or taken away from a number is just part of the finance game.

So, why has Elon Musk‘s net worth taken a nosedive?

Elon Musk has seen a $52 billion decline in his net worth this year (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Why the entrepreneur is busy spamming his follower’s X timelines with memes and verbal diarrhoea, Tesla sales have been slumping worldwide.

According to a report from CNN Business, shares in the electric vehicle company have decreased around 20% over the past month, while European sales have declined by 45% in the same period. This is a stark contrast to last November’s spike as investors raced to cash on his support for newly elected Donald Trump.

The company’s market value has also dropped below the $1 trillion mark for the first time since the US Presidential election. His personal net worth would later peak at an all-time high of $486.4 billion (£386 billion) on 17 December (per Bloomberg).

NBC News suggests that a decline in Tesla popularity could be down to Musk’s polarising personal beliefs, which have seen the SpaceX founder making headlines nearly everyday since Trump was inaugurated into the White House.

DOGE department debacles, such as recently at the centre of a ‘productivity email’ debacle, are potentially at fault for his decline in personal popularity.

The news follows a global slump in Tesla sales (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A possible further decline in Tesla shares was suggested by The Future Fund’s Gary Black, however, he doesn’t believe this will have long-term damage for the company.

“Tesla’s superior products, new more affordable vehicle, which I believe will be a new form factor and expand Tesla’s total addressable market, and the promise of unsupervised autonomy will sell more Teslas,” Black wrote on X.

But before any of us reach into our back pockets and start a whip round for Musk, his status as the world’s richest man isn’t currently under threat from the massive losses.

According to Forbes, Musk’s real-time net worth is $353.2 billion (£280.3 billion) at the time of writing, which still means he is still $100 billion ahead of competitors Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — despite losing around $5 billion (£3.9 billion) in just the last day.

Elon Musk has claimed that it’s more or less inevitable that Earth will be hit by an asteroid and that seeking a ‘second planet’ should be a priority.

With all the news from NASA about asteroid 2024 YR4 and its likelihood of hitting our planet, talks of a potential world-ending celestial object has increased.

Luckily though, the 130-300 feet asteroid dropped from a 3.1 percent chance of entering our atmosphere to just 0.0027 percent, or one in 37,037 according to NASA.

However, when the CEO of SpaceX casually mentions that it’s just a ‘matter of time’ before an asteroid hits us, you naturally start worrying again.

Musk was the latest guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, where the two talked about a range of subjects, from the US government to his alleged ‘Nazi salute’.

In one segment, where Rogan begins to look at some structures taken from above on Mars, pointing out that they ‘look like ancient ruins’, as the pair begin speaking about alien civilisations.

“If you had ruins of something made of stone and it got hit by an asteroid millions and millions and millions of years ago who knows what it would look like right now,” Rogan pointed out, as Musk, who aims to send astronauts to Mars with the assistance of President Trump, suggested they ‘go there and check it out’.

Billionaire Musk thinks that we’ll get hit by a celestial object soon (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The Tesla CEO went on, saying that we should have a ‘second planet’ to ‘preserve civilisation’, using Mars as an example.

“Let’s say hypothetically, maybe those are the ruins of a long dead civilisation – that will probably happen to Earth at some point, it’s a matter of time before we get hit by an asteroid,” he explained.

Musk went on to suggest: “Or maybe we do we annihilate ourselves with nuclear war or super volcanoes.”

Not exactly what you’d want to hear from someone part of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Rogan pointed out: “There’s a lot of things that could happen to us it’s not a bad idea to hedge your bets,” before Musk chipped in and suggested a ‘genetically engineered super virus’ could spell the end of the human race.

At the end of the day, who knows?

Let’s hope none of us live to see anything like this (Getty Stock Photo)

Musk also defended himself when it came to criticism over his alleged ‘Nazi salute’ following President Trump’s inauguration.

Highlighting that it was ‘meant in the most positive spirit possible’, Rogan pointed out: “You did it with a little enthusiasm that probably wouldn’t be recommended with hindsight.”

But Musk hit back at his critics, saying: “It’s deliberate propaganda. They know it was obviously not meant in a negative way. I’d literally said my heart goes out to you and the entire speech was very positive.

“I was being very enthusiastic about the future in space. It was a great crowd.”

He also called the allegations that the gesture was a ‘Nazi salute’ ‘coordinated propaganda’ from ‘the legacy media’, saying: “Hundreds of people saying it simultaneously, they just got their instructions.”

Social media app X, formerly known as Twitter, is reported to be down for thousands of users across the world.

At 10am this morning (10 March), more than 23,000 X users in the United States reported the app as not working according to DownDetector.

In the United Kingdom, more than 10,800 people did the same.

“Twitter stopped working,” one person wrote on social media at 10.16am.

Another said: “X experiencing service interruption worldwide.”

And a third posted: “Why is my freaking Twitter not working I want to say good morning!”

The issue seems to have been worldwide, with thousands in the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France, and Australia also reporting the issue to DownDetector.

Is Twitter down for you? (Chesnot/Getty Images)

Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion, and other X officials have yet to comment on the incident.

Issues were reported later on in the day, too, with 36,000 people in the United States reporting the app as not working at around 2pm.

This was followed by more issues 27,000 doing the same just before 3pm.

The same issues were felt around the world at the same time, with 8,500 and then just under 6,000 heading back to DownDetector to log the issue once again.

SpyoSecure, a cybersecurity team that ‘tracks, exposes, and reports’ scammers, said X was the victim of a cyber attack. Nothing on this has been said by the company.

Grok is the AI you can access on X (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Musk bought the app in 2022 in a hostile takeover of the company.

Since rebranding it as X, he says he is promoting a platform that prioritises free speech.

Sitting as chairman of the company, he has introduced his own AI chatbot on to the app called Grok.

Musk also got rid of what a ‘blue tick’ on the app meant, with accreditation now a paid-for service outside of the likes of politicians and government officials and departments.

The first image from the USA’s secret space plane currently orbiting the world has been released by the United States military.

Dubbed X-37B or the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), it is the code name for the spacecraft which is right on its seventh classified trip around the planet after being launched into the cosmic void by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2023.

First departing back in 2010, it has been on six previous trips to space under the remit of the United States Space Force, which protects the USA’s interests in space and uses space capabilities to support on-planet US military services.

Secrecy around what X-37B does has existed for the last decade and a half. But now, its first-ever image while in space has been released, some 15 years after its first mission.

Sharing an image to X (formerly Twitter), United States Space Force showed off part of the X-37B space plane while the Earth is sat glowing brightly in the dark void of space.

In a statement on social media, the United States Space Force said: “An X-37B onboard camera, used to ensure the health and safety of the vehicle, captures an image of Earth while conducting experiments in HEO [highly elliptical orbit] in 2024.

“The X-37B executed a series of first-of-kind manoeuvres, called aerobraking, to safely change its orbit using minimal fuel.”

The first photo from the X-37B secret space plane (US Space Force)

Experiments at highly elliptical orbit are journeys around the Earth which follow an elliptical or oval shape. This is usually in a pattern where the spacecraft is 1,000 kilometres at its closest to Earth and more than 35,700 kilometres from the planet at its most furthest away point.

Responding, people reacted how you would imagine on social media.

“‘High Earth Orbit’ feels like an understatement here. That is very, very high,” one X user wrote.

A second wrote: “WE HAVE SPACE PLANES?!”

And a third said: “One of the most secret aircraft / missions and now we just putting ourselves out there. I assume this is a ‘we’re watching you’ moment, no?”

Waiting for lift-off back on its first mission in 2010 (DoD/Corbis via Getty Images)

The current mission in to space is known as OTV-7, which was launched in to space by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on 12 December, 2023.

With no one manning the space plane during orbit, it can be launched at speeds humans couldn’t withstand. The same goes for re-entry when the plane comes back down to Earth.

Since entering orbit in 2023, Space Force says X-37B has been ‘conducting radiation effect experiments and has been testing Space Domain Awareness technologies in a Highly Elliptical Orbit’.

For information, space domain awareness is the study and monitoring of satellites orbiting the Earth.

When it returns to Earth, the X-37B lands on the former space shuttle runway, now known as the Launch and Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.