Since the beginning of 2025, Elon Musk has been having bad luck.

Elon Musk spent more than $200 million to help Donald Trump win re-election as US President in November. In the weeks after Trump’s victory, Musk made back that money — and more.

In fact, he became the first person in history to be worth $400 billion in December, after private investors valued his xAI startup at $50 billion (up from $24 billion in May) and his rocket company SpaceX at $350 billion (up from $210 billion in June). That same month, shareholders pushed Tesla’s market capitalization to a record high of $1.5 trillion.

But then things slowly started to fall apart.

Tesla shares struggled in early January after the company reported lower-than-expected deliveries for the fourth quarter of 2024. But Tesla shares really started to fall on January 21, the day after President Trump took office, when Musk took over as head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Concerns about Musk’s ability to run his electric car company while he works tirelessly to cut federal government spending have sent Tesla’s stock price down 50% from its high.

“In short, it’s going to be difficult for Elon Musk to balance running Tesla as CEO… while focusing all his energy and time on his DOGE initiative in the Trump administration,” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, a longtime Tesla backer, wrote in a recent analyst note. Ives also noted that the electric carmaker’s recent earnings numbers have been disappointing.

On January 29, Tesla reported that its 2024 revenue increased by just 1% to $97.7 billion, while its net income fell for the second straight year to $8.4 billion. Meanwhile, there were multiple reports that Tesla car sales had fallen sharply in the first two months of 2025 in Germany, China, and Australia.

JPMorgan analysts recently cut their forecast for Tesla’s global vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of 2025 to the lowest level since the third quarter of 2022. At the same time, protests against Tesla and Elon Musk have erupted at Tesla dealerships across the United States.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Musk formally appealed a January 2024 Delaware ruling that invalidated a record compensation package Tesla awarded him in 2018. The judge in the case said Musk and Tesla failed to demonstrate the fairness of the award process due to conflicts of interest and Musk’s control over the board.

Forbes has reduced the value of the underlying stock options from the compensation package (worth $65.3 billion as of Monday’s market close) by 50% until the outcome of Musk’s appeal is determined.

Excluding those options, Musk now owns 12% of Tesla, worth $97.8 billion, although he has pledged more than half of his shares to secure personal loans totaling $3.5 billion.

As Tesla’s value plunges, SpaceX is now Elon Musk’s most valuable asset for the first time in five years. Forbes estimates that Musk’s 42% stake in the rocket company is now worth $147 billion — nearly $20 billion more than his Tesla stock and options as of Monday’s market close.

The last time Musk’s stake in SpaceX exceeded his stake in Tesla was in 2019, when Musk’s entire fortune was worth just under $20 billion.

SpaceX, which launches satellites, cargo and astronauts into orbit for government and commercial customers, is expected to see its revenue grow 51% to $13.1 billion in 2024, according to estimates from industry analysts Payload Space. Revenue from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service is estimated to nearly double to $8.2 billion.

While SpaceX and Tesla still account for more than 80% of Musk’s estimated $329 billion net worth, he also holds smaller stakes in xAI, X Corp (formerly Twitter), tunneling company The Boring Company, and brain implant company Neuralink. The combined value of those investments adds $45 billion to Musk’s fortune.

Musk has acknowledged the “tremendous difficulties” of balancing his leadership of DOGE with running six other companies. But he hasn’t given up on his electric car company, saying in a post on X last Monday that Tesla will be “stable in the long run.” Despite its recent struggles, the company’s stock price is up 46% over the past year, and Musk remains the richest person in the world.