Tesla is no longer Elon Musk's most valuable asset.

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Elon Musk paid out more than $200 million to help get Donald Trump reelected in November. In the weeks following Trump's victory, Musk more than made that back. In fact, he became the first person ever worth $400 billion in December after private investors valued his startup xAI at $50 billion, up from $24 billion in May, and his rocket maker SpaceX at $350 billion, up from $210 billion in June. That same month, public shareholders drove Tesla's market capitalization to an all-time high of $1.5 trillion.

Then, things started to slowly unravel. Tesla's stock hit a speed bump in early January after the company reported weaker-than-expected deliveries for the fourth quarter of 2024. But Tesla shares started really recoiling on January 21st—the day after President Trump's inauguration—when Musk took over as head of Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Worries over Musk's ability to run the car company while working around the clock to slash federal government spending sent the stock crashing down 50% from its high. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, in a recent analyst report, noted that Tesla's numbers have been soft as of late and wrote:

"In a nutshell, the word ‘balance’ has been missing with Elon Musk and his ability to run Tesla as CEO while instead focusing all of his energy and time driving his DOGE initiative within the Trump Administration."

On January 29th, Tesla reported that its revenue grew a disappointing 1% to $97.7 billion during 2024, while its net income fell for the second straight year to $8.4 billion. Meanwhile, reports have emerged of dramatic declines in Tesla car sales in the first two months of 2025 in Germany, China, and Australia. Analysts at JP Morgan recently cut their global deliveries forecast for the first quarter of 2025 to their lowest level since the third quarter of 2022.

At the same time, protests against Tesla and Musk have erupted at Tesla dealerships across the U.S.

Perhaps it's not much of a surprise, then, that Musk launched an official appeal a week ago against a ruling out of Delaware in January 2024 that voided the record-breaking Tesla pay package he was granted in 2018. The judge in the case ruled that Musk and Tesla failed to prove that the process underlying the award was fair due to conflicts of interest and Musk’s “control over the board.”

Forbes has discounted the underlying stock options from the pay package—worth $65.3 billion as of this past Monday’s market close—by 50% pending the results of Musk’s appeal. Excluding those options, Musk owns a 12% stake in Tesla worth $97.8 billion, though he's pledged more than half his shares to secure personal loans of up to $3.5 billion.

With Tesla crashing, SpaceX is now Elon Musk’s most valuable asset for the first time in five years. Forbes estimates that Musk’s 42% stake in his rocket maker 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 SpaceX stake was worth more than his Tesla stock and options was in 2019, when his entire fortune was only worth about $20 billion.

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

While SpaceX and Tesla still make up more than 80% of Musk’s estimated $329 billion net worth, he also owns smaller stakes in xAI, X Corp (formerly Twitter), tunneling startup The Boring Company, and brain implant firm Neuralink. Together, those holdings add another $45 billion to Musk’s fortune.