Elon Musk’s finances have taken a hit after his wealth drops below $400 billion for the first time.

Before we get out a tiny violin, the billionaire is still the world’s richest man.

But his net worth has shrunk after Tesla stocks continue to lose value in the first couple months of the year.

Tesla stocks have dropped in recent months (Christian Marquardt – Pool/Getty Images)

In recent months, Tesla has seen its shares plummet as Musk has taken on a new role in President Trump’s administration.

Assuming the role of head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has turned his focus on the Treasury Department.

While DOGE isn’t technically a governmental body, the department has been described by Trump as an outside advisor on government spending.

Since his appointment, Musk has been granted access to the Treasury’s payment system, a move that has proven to be controversial among the public.

Fears continue to grow that the Tesla boss could potentially have access to confidential and personal information including Medicare benefits payments and social security numbers of millions of Americans.

As a result, there have been a wave of protests and vandalism against Tesla.

At one protest at a Tesla dealership in southern California, one protestor told KSBY that Musk ‘is shredding our democracy’.

Another protest was held at a Tesla showroom in Manhattan where one organizer spoke to amNewYork, saying: “We were upset with Musk taking over the government.”

Musk’s role in the Trump administration could be the cause of his shrinking net worth (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

And according to Oppenheimer analysts, there is a specific reason why they believe Tesla is going through a slump.

They said: “Musk’s political activity has fans in certain circles, but his public life risks alienating consumers and employees as the Trump administration tests the limits of its power.”

The legality of the practices by the Trump administration has been called into question after 19 state attorneys general sued the government, claiming that giving DOGE access to the records violates federal law.

A preliminary injunction was also put in place by a judge to halt Musk from accessing Treasury data, something he wasn’t best pleased about.

Taking to his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, the SpaceX CEO said: “How on Earth are we supposed to stop fraud and waste of taxpayer money without looking at how money is spent?”

In the judge’s order, it said that states would ‘face irreparable’ harm if immediate relief wasn’t implemented.

The order continued: “That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”

A popular tech YouTuber has found herself at the centre of an online backlash after a brief 8-word post about Elon Musk.

Justine ‘iJustine’ Ezarik has been creating content on YouTube since 2006, just a year after the video-sharing platform launched and is still uploading content to her seven million subscribers to date.

The lover of tech was one of the first to upload footage of the original iPhone during the first week of its release.

As time went on, her love for Apple products remained a major theme of her channel but now, it has expanded to things like Tesla vehicles and Cybertrucks.

One such video addressed the curious question “Will the Cybertruck cut a pizza?” whilst another addressed the large ‘hatred’ for the futuristic truck.

But there are very few things you should mix politics with. And iJustine felt the wrath of online uproar after she posted a simple message about the head of DOGE Elon Musk.

“Hope Elon is enjoying his first Presidents Day,” the YouTuber simply posted on X.

One of the first replies called her out for getting political, writing: “Ugh! You were one of the few tech reviewers left who stayed out of politics…..until now.”

To which Justine replied: “Just wanted to wish our pres a happy day”.

Unhappy fans made their disapproval known by commenting: “well you just lost a subscriber” and “unfollowed”.

Another X user warned: “I wouldn’t have made that post, it decreases your reach significantly”.

Others came to the YouTuber’s defence arguing: “I don’t understand why people are upset with Justine. She is entitled to her opinion just like everyone else.

“I don’t have to agree with her on everything to still respect her opinions and abilities.”

Paul Archuleta / Contributor / Getty

Justine responded with: “I didn’t even say an opinion lol”

Elsewhere, she recently did a piece with People Magazine where she reflected on her early days of making YouTube content and how she got started with it.

“Years before [YouTube], I ran a daily random photo site all through middle school, high school and into college. And then when video became a thing, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool.’ So I had been posting everywhere,” Erzarik recalled.

“When I found YouTube, it was interesting because it was the first place that I saw comments and a bunch of responses from people. And it was weird because I was just uploading to show my friends.”

It will be fascinating to look back and study the arc of Elon Musk. How did one man go from making $175.8 million from the sale of PayPal to founding SpaceX, fathering three children Grimes, and donating to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign while saying Donald Trump shouldn’t be the President? Then, finds himself sitting by the President’s side as he heads up the Department of Government Efficiency and seemingly bleeds Republican while he wears a black Make America Great Again hat.

Somewhere between all of this, Musk has continued business ventures like the purchase and rebranding of Twitter as X, continued to push forward with Tesla‘s EV future, and even found time to squeeze in a cameo or two.

Musk was later mentioned in season 10 and popped up in Young Sheldon (CBS)

Before Musk became quite as a divisive character in pop culture, he stopped by in everything from Iron Man 2 to Machete Kills, The Simpsons to South Park. If playing ‘Elon Tusk’ in Rick and Morty didn’t have you questioning whether we’re all living in a simulation, a resurfaced video from 2015 is leaving viewers more than a little perplexed.

Whatever you think of The Big Bang Theory, it carved itself a popular niche across its whopping 279-episode run.

Landing memorable cameos from Stephen Hawking, James Earl Jones, Leonard Nimoy, and more, it became a cornucopia of tech and sci-fi faces.

Musk famously appeared in 2015’s “The Platonic Permutation.” Here, Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) met Musk while serving Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless.

In the clip, Howard is star-struck by running into Musk, who is pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. There are jokes about being too generous with the gravy and trips to Mars, but in the comments, plenty are saying that something feels a little off.

There’s been a massive rise in artificial intelligence and deepfakes in the 10 years since Musk appeared on The Big Bang Theory, but rewatching the clip, some are convinced Musk was using it back then.

One skeptic wrote: “There’s something off and weird about Elon’s face and his head movements. I thought this was AI. Is this real? What’s going on here?”

Another added, “Yeah it’s super weird that it looks AI. Makes me question everything,” and a third said, “He just has the same air about him as Mark Zuckerberg. poorly made animatronics posing as humans (jk but they do look like that).”

Someone else shared their concerns that it’s getting increasingly hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not as they concluded: “If one more old man says he can’t tell the difference between AI and real life I’m gonna lose my mind 😵‍💫.”

The world’s richest man was later mentioned in a season 10 episode of The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) discussed Elon’s theory that our reality is all part of a video game being played by aliens. In the aftermath of the ‘AI Elon’ video resurfacing, we’re inclined to look into this one a little more.

More details are coming out about Elon Musk‘s latest paternity drama, as Make America Great Again influencer Ashley St. Clair claims she secretly gave birth to his 13th child in late 2024.

Musk has officially fathered 12 children, and following the birth of twins Strider and Azure with Shivon Zilis in 2022, he had another unnamed child with the former Neuralink executive in late 2024.

According to St. Clair, Musk has fathered a baker’s dozen of children, saying she was forced to keep the birth of her unnamed son a secret. Known for her conservative children’s books and writing for the Babylon Bee, St. Clair has dished all on her relationship with the tech billionaire and explained how he ‘slid’ into her DMs in May 2023.

St. Clair claims she secretly gave birth to Musk’s son in September 2024 (X / @stclairashley)

A series of NSFW interactions from this time line up St. Clair’s story, but now, a photograph of the pair together has added another layer to things.

As shared by the Daily Mail, there’s photo evidence of Musk and St. Clair meeting in May 2023. St. Clair has already said that Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon asked her to fly to interview Musk, and in the picture, Dillon can be seen alongside the pair at the San Francisco headquarters of X.

Although the site claims their first public interaction was him replying with a laughing emoji to a meme she posted about vaccine skepticism on May 4, 2023, she was responding to his posts from at least February that year.

On May 12, 2023, St. Clair shared a picture of herself in a car and shared a political warning, with Musk responding, “Nice 🐈🎣👏,” joking about her being a catfish.

Exactly 10 days later, she was snapped alongside Musk, who was wearing a Doge meme t-shirt.

St. Clair and Musk were snapped together in May 2023 (X / @stclairashley)

In her New York Post interview, St. Clair maintains that Musk followed up their San Francisco meeting with an invite to Providence, Rhode Island.

Eagle-eyed sleuths on Reddit suggest the two might’ve met in Miami in December 2023, although St. Clair’s spokesman, Brian Glicklich, says they weren’t there at the same time.

Sources told DailyMail.com that St. Clair moved into a luxury apartment around the time of her Miami trip and was seen with a newborn baby (thought to be with her ex, Dr. Johnny Alexander).

Things go quiet after that, but if St. Clair did give birth to Musk’s 13th child in September 2024, they seem to have stayed on good terms in the aftermath. They’d been sharing pleasant exchanges as recently as February 2025, all leading up to her explosive post on February 14 that claims he’d secretly fathered her child.

St. Clair has appealed to Musk to speak to her in a now-deleted post, but at the time of writing, he’s only given a one-word response – and not even directly to her.

The Daily Mail says it had been looking into reports that something was going on between Musk and St. Clair ‘weeks’ before her announcement, while Glicklich says that the influencer came forward because she thought the ‘tabloid media’ was going to out her.