<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that created ChatGPT, is in discussions about a potential share sale that would value it at $80 to $90 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-seeks-new-valuation-of-up-to-90-billion-in-sale-of-existing-shares-ed6229e0?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal—about three times what it was valued in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/01/05/chatgpt-creator-openai-discussing-offer-valuing-company-at-29-billion-report-says/?sh=62fa761311e0">January</a>, as the AI race heats up.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



It’s expected that the deal will let employees sell their shares, instead of OpenAI issuing new ones, the&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;reported, citing multiple unnamed sources.



A valuation of $80 or $90 billion would make OpenAI—which is privately held—one of the highest valued startups, joining the ranks of TikTok owner ByteDance and SpaceX and surpassing companies like Shein and Canva.



OpenAI is positioned to earn more than $1 billion in revenue over the next year by selling access to a higher-quality version of ChatGPT and the technology behind it, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-track-generate-more-than-1-bln-revenue-over-12-months-information-2023-08-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;last month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



OpenAI is backed largely by Microsoft, which owns 49% of the company, according to the&nbsp;Journal. Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/?sh=4173fcd63c0c">expanded</a>&nbsp;its investment earlier this year when it put billions more into OpenAI, and it has begun integrating the company’s AI technology into its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/microsoft-bing-openai-artificial-intelligence.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bing search engine</a>&nbsp;in a bid to compete with Google.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



ChatGPT—OpenAI’s chief product—launched last November and quickly became one of the most popular artificial intelligence programs. Within a week of its launch, the program attracted one million signed-up users who were able to use it for free while the product was in a “research preview” phase. People can still use ChatGPT for free, but OpenAI also offers ChatGPT+ for a $20 per month subscription fee. Beyond normal access to ChatGPT, subscribers get faster response times, are able to use the service even during peak times and get priority access to new features, according to its&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



OpenAI backer Microsoft isn’t the only major tech company to invest in artificial intelligence. Google <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/03/21/google-releases-bard-ai-chatbot-amid-competition-with-chatgpt/?sh=769740e832b7">launched</a> its Bard AI chatbot earlier this year, and has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/09/19/google-expands-ai-chatbot-bard-to-apps-like-gmail-drive-and-youtube/?sh=594736544905">begun integrating it</a> into services like Gmail and YouTube, while Amazon announced a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/09/25/amazon-plans-to-invest-up-to-4-billion-in-ai-startup-anthropic/?sh=7408d8aa30e0">$4 billion investment</a> in AI startup Anthropic on Monday.

In this photo illustration a Open AI logo is displayed on a

OpenAI Could Reach Massive $90 Billion Valuation With New Share Sales, Report Says

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Apple and Nvidia stocks tanked for the second consecutive trading session Thursday, a rare down stretch for the Silicon Valley titans this year fueled by concerns about each of their explosive sales.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Apple shares slipped 3.4% by 2:25 p.m. Eastern time after Bloomberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-07/china-plans-to-expand-iphone-ban-to-some-state-backed-firms-in-blow-to-apple?srnd=premium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;China is considering banning iPhone usage among some government workers and employees at state-owned corporations, casting doubt on Apple’s strength in the country which accounts for roughly a fifth of its sales.



The slide comes a day after Apple shed 3.6% – its 6.9% dip since Tuesday marks the steepest two-day loss for the world’s most valuable company since November.



Nvidia shares also dropped about 3% Thursday, bringing its two-day loss to 5.5% as the S&amp;P 500’s best-performer of 2023 suffered a rare tumble.



The artificial intelligence leader’s stock slump came as a dubious conspiracy theory&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JesseCohenInv/status/1699307464619876691" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proliferated&nbsp;</a>on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, suggesting that Nvidia has artificially inflated revenue in its AI segment by lying about its sales to CoreWeave, a Nvidia-backed cloud computing startup&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-30/coreweave-said-to-seek-stake-sale-at-up-to-8-billion-valuation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;valued at about $8 billion.



That theory is “nonsense,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a Thursday note to clients he “very grudgingly” sent out, encouraging investors to not get “your investment thesis from Twitter randos.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$250 billion. That’s how much market capitalization Apple and Nvidia shed over the last two days.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Apple and Nvidia are two of the seven tech stocks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/10/these-7-tech-stocks-command-almost-90-of-the-sp-500s-gains-signaling-market-rally-may-not-be-so-healthy/?sh=65e0aafc65d5">accounting for</a>&nbsp;a large majority of major stock indexes’ gains this year, leading to lingering questions about the depth of the strong market (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla round out the super seven). Both Apple and Nvidia set all-time high share prices this year, but on far different trajectories. Apple rode a steady 42% gain this year, just ahead with the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 32% rise, thanks to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/05/04/apple-beats-quarterly-profit-sales-estimates-despite-interest-rate-headwinds/?sh=77f139f03637">solid</a>&nbsp;5% and 6% earnings beats during the first and second quarters, respectively, while Nvidia more than tripled in share price due to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/23/nvidia-earnings-stock-soars-as-ai-giant-again-smashes-quarterly-expectations/">exploding</a>&nbsp;expectations about its AI business, which grew by 141% just last quarter.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“The Nasdaq is sinking as one bad Apple spoils a bunch of mega-cap tech stocks,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.marketpulse.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oanda</a>&nbsp;analyst Edward Moya wrote Thursday. The index is down 2% over the last two days, steeper than the S&amp;P 500’s 1% loss.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&amp;uuid=14d8c1fa-4dad-11ee-bf85-ff6800d7a7ae&amp;url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyMy0wOS0wNy9jaGluYS1wbGFucy10by1leHBhbmQtaXBob25lLWJhbi10by1zb21lLXN0YXRlLWJhY2tlZC1maXJtcy1pbi1ibG93LXRvLWFwcGxlP3NybmQ9cHJlbWl1bQ==" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BLOOMBERGBloomberg</a>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/23/nvidia-earnings-stock-soars-as-ai-giant-again-smashes-quarterly-expectations/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MORE FROM FORBESNvidia Earnings: Stock Soars As AI Giant Again Smashes Quarterly ExpectationsBy&nbsp;Derek Saul</a>



<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824661/coreweave-nvidia-debt-gpu-ai-chips-collateral" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">THE VERGEHow to get your startup a loan with one easy computer part</a>

Apple Ahead Of The IPhone 15 Launch

Apple And Nvidia’s Losses This Week Hit $250 Billion

Alessandro Rosano’s contrarian playbook for the comfort-footwear company: no financing and minimal marketing. It worked so well he sold to Crocs for $2.5 billion.



Two years ago, Brown’s Shoe Fit Co.’s desperation to stock enough HeyDude shoes to meet the demand reached frenzied levels. The buyers for the 73-store Midwestern chain would get a status report in the morning and try to place a large order. “We would get one-fourth or one-half of what we put in for,” says Adam Smith, senior manager for Brown’s and a former store manager in Jacksonville, Illinois. “The whole nation was trying to get them.”



HeyDude founder Alessandro Rosano, an Italian entrepreneur living in Hong Kong, had tried his hand at other businesses before. But with HeyDude, which makes comfortable slip-on loafers with a so-ugly-they’re-cute look, he hit the jackpot. With minimal investment and almost no marketing, revenue took off, reaching $581 million in 2021, with net profit of $175 million. That December, Rosano agreed to sell the brand to Crocs, the $6.2 billion (market cap) firm whose own ugly-cute rubber clogs are a worldwide phenomenon, for $2.5 billion in cash and stock.



With that deal, Rosano became a billionaire, worth $1.4 billion by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates. His business partner and American distributor Daniele Guidi also made a fortune, worth some $650 million after tax by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates, after bringing in $787 million in cash from the deal, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.



Rosano declined to speak with Forbes, and Guidi didn’t respond to requests for comment. But what the two men were able to build, largely under the radar, is an unlikely success. It stands in stark contrast to many of the direct-to-consumer brands that received lavish amounts of funding and attention from social media during the boom years while failing to become viable businesses. Comfort shoe maker Allbirds, once the darling of Silicon Valley, for example, has seen its market cap collapse from a peak of more than $4 billion after its 2021 initial public offering to just $199 million today as annual sales failed to top $300 million and losses piled up.



Now Rosano, a strategic advisor to the brand under Crocs following the acquisition, has set up a family office to invest his money and work on philanthropy. Crocs is using the brand, which reached $1.1 billion in sales in the latest 12-month period, to add spice to its broader business.



Comfort shoes are having a moment. Crocs, with total sales of $3.6 billion in 2022, has said it hopes to reach $5 billion in sales for its flagship brand by 2026. HeyDude looks poised to help the company soar past that. In 2022, HeyDude was the single fastest growing brand at retail, according to consumer research firm Circana (formerly NPD).



“When we first bought it, we wanted to be clear to people that this was a scale business,” Crocs CEO Andrew Rees tells&nbsp;Forbes. “They hadn’t heard of it, and didn’t know what it was. We put out the $1 billion target, which we knew we could blow past, and we’ve gotten to that easily.”



Rosano, who is in his mid-50s, was a shoe dude long before he came up with HeyDude. He grew up in Tuscany, and studied at Commercio Estero, Pistoia, from 1982 to 1987, though he never received a university degree, according to his LinkedIn profile. Pistoia, a medieval Italian city that’s popular with tourists, is less than 30 miles from Florence, home to Ferragamo and Gucci, in a region known for luxury goods and footwear.



Rosano, who started designing shoes at age 18, had tried other businesses before HeyDude, and had a shoe distributor called Fratelli Diversi. On his LinkedIn profile, where he has just 164 connections, he describes his approach to that company as “acting in a fair and reasonable way, to the people and the environment. Charity acts are also a duty.”



Rosano cofounded a company with Guidi and a third person to make wooden watches called WeWood. Wooden watches are a tough business, and the company was subject to unfair competition litigation in 2011 from a now-defunct watchmaker called Vestal International. Rosano also came up with an idea for wooden clogs with springs in their heels that sold under the name Baldo. None of his early businesses found notable success.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“If you were to lay out the playbook that they followed and present it to a series of business executives, they would say there’s no way that this would succeed.”Crocs CEO Andrew Rees
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



He’d been working in these various businesses for more than 20 years when he founded HeyDude in 2008. In a&nbsp;<a href="https://fotoshoemagazine.com/hey-dude-comfort-has-an-iconic-style/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2020 interview with Fotoshoe magazine</a>, an Italian industry publication, Rosano’s sister Elena De Martini, who was then CEO of Fratelli Diversi, described how Rosano returned from a trip to China and realized that a modern shoe that was as comfortable as a slipper didn’t exist — and decided to create one.



The shoes Rosano developed, starting with the Wally for men, were lightweight, with elastic laces that didn’t require fastening, and affordable, at around $60 a pair. “The result is perfectly constructed footwear, which is innovative, ultra-light and casual, but with style,” De Martini told&nbsp;Fotoshoe.&nbsp;The shoes were designed in Italy, but the business was headquartered in Hong Kong, where Rosano lives, with production at contract factories in China.



Rosano “is a student,” Crocs CEO Rees says. “He’s a serial entrepreneur. He had a number of entrepreneurial businesses before this that had not been successful. He was looking to improve his chances of success and he admired [Crocs’] focus on simplicity and comfort.”



Though many Italian shoemakers create beautiful shoes for Europeans, Rosano was going for something more mainstream. Not wanting to name the brand after himself as many Italian shoe entrepreneurs would, he came up with HeyDude for its laid-back California vibe, says Rick Blackshaw, who became president of the brand under Crocs. “But all his friends in Italy would call it ‘ey du-day,’” Blackshaw says.



In 2010, Guidi, who has a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Pisa and runs a consulting and marketing firm called Lever Your Business, joined Rosano to open U.S. operations. The shoes took off, and HeyDude added a woman’s model known as the Wendy, a water shoe and a variety of eco-friendly designs. The shoes were prototypically American looking, easy to wear — and looked like nothing else on the market. Almost all the sales came from the U.S. market, rather than from Europe.



HeyDude sales soared from $20 million in 2018 to&nbsp;<a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/133460125/files/doc_presentations/2022/01/10/ICR-Presentation-vF.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$191 million in 2020,</a>&nbsp;according to financials that Crocs shared with investors at the 2022 ICR conference. During the pandemic, as consumers stayed home wearing yoga pants and comfort shoes, the brand fit right in. Its success came despite having no marketing to speak of other than paid search and a commission-based sales team. “It was built on a shoestring,” says Crocs’ Rees.



The brand took off by word of mouth. “In many senses, it’s a pretty remarkable story,” Rees says. “If you were to lay out the playbook that they followed and present it to a set of business executives, they would say there’s no way that this would succeed.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
With comfort shoes having a moment, the brand’s sales soared from $20 million in 2018 to $581 million in 2021.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Footwear analysts and industry watchers were blindsided. “It kind of caught a lot of the industry players by surprise,” says Beth Goldstein, a footwear analyst at Circana. “This brand came up and was all of a sudden having these huge growth rates and buzz. It piqued everyone’s interest.”



Brown’s became one of the earliest larger retailers to stock it after its Muskogee, Oklahoma store manager learned about the brand at a 2012 trade show in Las Vegas. The Buckle, a Kearney, Nebraska-based retail chain with 440 stores, also began carrying HeyDude before the shoe company’s major expansion, in 2019.



“We were known as the top HeyDude retailer,” says Brown’s Smith. “In the pandemic, we didn’t know if we could get products, so we were ordering them by the pallet.” With customers sometimes buying five pairs at a time, however much Brown’s could get its hands on sold out fast. Facebook groups sprung up where people could compare notes, and buy, sell and trade their shoes.



“It was limited quantity and a lot of fun styles and colors, and the price was right,” Smith says. “The customer wanted them so bad it almost didn’t matter what the color was. It was crazy, that’s probably the best way to put it.”



Two days before Christmas 2021, Crocs agreed to buy HeyDude for $2.5 billion, most of it in cash and a smaller amount in stock. Wall Street was not impressed. The shoes that were selling out in the Midwest were scarce on the coasts, where many of the analysts and investors live, and the shoes lacked the cache of hot new sneaker brands like Hoka and On.



“To be honest, when they announced the acquisition, I had never heard of the brand,” says Tom Nikic, a Wedbush analyst, who follows Crocs and has been covering the footwear industry for more than a decade. “It was very much a shock to the system. I think those of us in the New York, Wall Street bubble, we didn’t realize what was happening with the brand.”



Rosano had clearly timed the market well, putting the brand up for sale as it was growing fast and demand for comfort shoes was at a high. Allbirds had gone public in November 2021 gaining a $4.1 billion valuation, making it worth 15 times its sales for that year despite being in the red. By contrast, HeyDude, which was already profitable on higher sales, seemed like a bargain. Crocs CEO Rees says that he’d been following HeyDude for a few years by the time he learned it was on the market and figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to turn it into a $1 billion brand under the Crocs umbrella.



“It was a tightly managed sale process,” Rees says. “They were trying to sell to private equity at that point. We got introduced to the founder and managed to get ourselves inserted into the sales process. At that point, we also started to learn about the compelling financials. It wasn’t completely obvious because they were private, and because they weren’t selling in the traditional channels it wasn’t showing up in the typical data sets.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Rosano had a number of businesses before HeyDude, including a wooden watch startup and a brand of clogs with springs in their heels. None found notable success.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



With Covid restrictions in place, Rees and Rosano couldn’t meet in person. But Rees figured he didn’t need to meet the HeyDude management team since he planned to replace them. He saw similarities with Crocs: both were polarizing brands that a lot of consumers loved. “I think we got a pretty good deal,” he says. “We weren’t daunted by the large-dollar price tag.”



HeyDude’s strategy of focusing on one style of comfort shoe at a mass-market price was a playbook familiar to Crocs. “Alessandro was really clear that he had modeled a lot of his company on Crocs,” Rees says. “He had been studying Crocs and taking our strategies and incorporating them.”



Crocs also knew what Wall Street didn’t at first: Rosano, helped by Guidi’s U.S. distribution, had built a significant and profitable brand with minimal investment. Though those who know him say that Rosano had been strategic in how he’d built the brand, from the outside it appeared to have burst onto the scene almost by chance.



“We’ve become somewhat acclimated to these newer upstart brands being unprofitable and burning through cash,” analyst Nikic says. “This isn’t Allbirds. This isn’t a money-losing, cash-burning business. It’s actually a very highly profitable company.” Nikic compares the brand’s fast growth to Crocs itself, as well as to Ugg, which built its business on one style of comfort boots.



Since acquiring HeyDude, Crocs has hired Blackshaw, who previously ran Sperry and Keds, as its new brand president. It’s introduced new styles, including sneakers, and is setting up collaborations to give it more buzz. It’s also rejiggering its distribution, expanding to major retailers like Shoe Carnival, Famous Footwear and Academy Sports, and building a new distribution center in Las Vegas to handle its expansion.



The acquisition hasn’t been without a few snags. In the second quarter, HeyDude took a hit — with modest 3% growth as its wholesale revenue dropped 8% year-over-year — and Crocs cut its guidance for the brand for the year from mid-20% growth to between 14% and 18%. One problem: as Crocs cut smaller distributors set up by Rosano and Guidi before the acquisition, some dumped their inventory at lowball prices on Amazon. Wedbush analyst Nikic figures that the problems with gray-market goods should wind down in the coming months once the legacy distributors’ inventory is gone. In its earnings call, Crocs pointed to HeyDude’s 30% increase in direct-to-consumer revenues as a sign of the brand’s strength while it dealt with the “pipeline fill” issues in the wholesale channel. Crocs shares are down 19%, at a recent $100, since the deal was announced.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Crocs hopes to make HeyDude as ubiquitous as its original ugly-cute rubber clogs, helped by new distribution and marketing muscle.
</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Marketing muscle and collaborations helped Crocs push its flagship brand, and it intends to do the same with HeyDude. Blackshaw says that the company will “overinvest,” noting it could spend up to 8% of total sales on marketing. Part of the plan: connect with consumers on TikTok and Meta, helped by partnerships with influencers and athletes. A collaboration with hunting brand Mossy Oak launched in June, another with YouTube sports and comedy group Dude Perfect (whose channel has 60 million subscribers) followed in August and a college licensing deal is in the works for this fall. The company has plans for more collaborations, including with&nbsp;Yellowstone,&nbsp;The Big Lebowski, a major beer brand and some toy brands. “It’s a lot of the same playbook that Crocs brought to bear,” Blackshaw says.



Whether the brand will take off on the coasts as it has in the middle of the country remains to be seen. Another risk for HeyDude as it expands is oversaturation. As analyst Goldstein notes, Crocs will need to strike the right balance between growth and introducing new styles that risk cannibalizing its core business. “They almost invented a category,” she says. As the brand expands into other types of shoes, “they need to make their proposition clear,” she says. “Why is a HeyDude sneaker better than anyone else’s casual sneaker?”



Meanwhile, Rosano has his fortune to invest and give away. While venture-backed startups stumble, HeyDude harkens back to an older way of building a company on a smart idea and a shoestring. Perhaps, like comfort shoes, it’s time for that to come back into style.

F4Ye2L5WIAAYHWb

How The HeyDude Guy Became A Billionaire Selling Ugly Shoes

With Roger Federer following Williams into retirement and Rafael Nadal winding down his career, opportunities abound for young players—on and off the court.



When Holger Rune&nbsp;started watching Rafael Nadal, he was about 7, maybe 8, growing up in Denmark and worshiping the Spanish tennis legend for what Rune calls his “fighting spirit.” Then he started looking up to Roger Federer, for his elegance and his transition game coming to the net.



“If I was going to idolize them, I was trying to idolize them all the way. So I wore the same clothes; I played with the same racket,” Rune tells&nbsp;Forbes, confirming that the mimicry extended to wearing Federer’s signature bandana. “I even tried the one-handed backhand, but luckily my coach told me to stick to your own tennis.”



Rune’s tennis has taken him pretty far—onto practice courts with both Nadal and Federer and into competitive matches against another player he has long admired, world No. 2 Novak Djokovic, whom Rune has actually beaten in two of their three meetings. His game has also sent the 20-year-old skyrocketing to No. 4 in the world rankings, from outside the top 100 at the start of 2022.



And he is not tennis’ only precocious player. A fellow 20-year-old, Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, sits atop the ATP Tour’s rankings while 22-year-old Jannik Sinner of Italy and 24-year-old Casper Ruud from Norway are seen as real contenders to win a Grand Slam, whether at this year’s U.S. Open or going forward.



On the women’s side, Polish phenom Iga Swiatek is No. 1 and owns four major titles at age 22, and American Coco Gauff is a 19-year-old rising star who reached the French Open final last year and won the two biggest tournaments of her career this month.



To be sure, no one—whether tournament organizers or broadcast executives or sponsors—is racing to chase Federer, who retired last year, or Nadal, who has said 2024 will likely be his final season, out of the sport. And while Djokovic is 36 and less than a year younger than Nadal, he continues to play at the highest level, winning titles at this year’s Australian Open and French Open and losing to Alcaraz in a thrilling five-set final at Wimbledon. Still, there is a recognition that tennis tends to go through cycles of talent—just as Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi ruled the era before the Big Three—and there is a growing belief that a new generation is ready to fill the void, on and off the court.



“For sure, it’s not the worst time to be in tennis,” Rune says with a smile.



He and his fellow prodigies have quite the tennis shoes to fill. Djokovic has won a record 23 major singles titles, followed by Nadal with 22 and Federer with 20—no other man has won more than 14 (Sampras). Add it all up, and the Big Three have captured 65 of a possible 80 Slams dating to Federer’s first title at Wimbledon in 2003. Their dominance has been so absolute for so long that tennis pundits speak of a “lost generation,” and the numbers back that up: Players younger than Djokovic have won a combined six Grand Slam titles since Federer exploded on the scene, with four of them coming in the last three years (Dominic Thiem in 2020, Daniil Medvedev in 2021 and Alcaraz in 2022 and 2023).



And while she did not have as much company at the top of the sport, Serena Williams, who like Federer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2022/08/09/serena-williams-tennis-retirement-net-worth-earnings/">announced her retirement</a>&nbsp;last year before backtracking somewhat in subsequent interviews, herself piled up 23 major singles titles, a women’s record for tennis’ Open Era.



The four tennis legends have an equally imposing legacy off the court. A mainstay near the top of&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;annual list of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/">world’s highest-paid athletes</a>, the 42-year-old Federer is one of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2022/06/12/billion-dollar-ballers-these-athletes-tiger-woods-lebron-james-federer-messi-ronaldo-mayweather-have-earned-more-than-1-billion-apiece/">just seven athletes</a>&nbsp;with career pre-tax earnings over $1 billion, having cultivated a sponsor portfolio filled nearly top to bottom with premium brands, including Rolex, LVMH and NetJets. “Novak, he tried to be ahead in technology, and Nadal, he just tried to be a little bit different,” Lisa Delpy Neirotti, associate professor of sports management at George Washington University, notes of two players who have crossed $500 million in career earnings. Meanwhile, Williams, who made an estimated $440 million across her career, was a trailblazer among athletes as a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/06/03/inside-serena-williams-plan-to-ace-venture-investing/">venture investor</a>&nbsp;and a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2022/12/08/serena-williams-feels-your-pain/">startup founder</a>, and transcended the sport into mainstream pop culture, appearing in two Super Bowl commercials in 2023 alone.



Alessandro Barel Di Sant Albano, who represents Gauff at Team8 and has worked with Federer, says Williams and the Big Three “have been the GOATs that have taken the traditional TV-watching fan into thinking about athletes as brands. They’re the pioneers that have taken us to a new way of looking at tennis as more of an entertainment platform, and more than just a sport.”



And all of that is setting aside the societal changes of the last 20 years, starting with the rise of social media. The upshot: The players coming of age today are entering a dramatically different, and increasingly global, sponsorship market, with more brands looking to spend more money on tennis than ever before.



The players have already started to take advantage of sponsorship opportunities, with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2023/08/25/the-worlds-highest-paid-tennis-players-2023/">eight of the sport’s ten highest-paid</a>&nbsp;now under 30. Shoe and apparel companies typically come calling first—often by age 13, Delpy Neirotti notes—but other brands have also seen “a unique opportunity to align themselves with someone who can carry the torch,” says Marijn Bal, Ruud’s agent at IMG. “They know that if they get in early, they can get a lot of bang for their buck.”



So what will it take for a young player to reach the heights that Federer did? It starts with winning, which brings more attention from marketers and can also come with a direct payoff because endorsement deals often carry bonuses—sometimes in the seven figures—for climbing up the rankings or winning Grand Slams. For instance, Emma Raducanu raked in $18 million from endorsements and appearances in 2022, after winning the 2021 U.S. Open as a virtual unknown, and Naomi Osaka’s four major titles helped her eclipse Williams’ earnings record for a female athlete with at least $50 million off the court in both 2021 and 2022.



But “you need continued dominance—you can’t be dominant for just a few months, or a couple of years,” adds John Tobias, an agent at GSE Worldwide. “And it’s also about staying healthy in a really physically demanding sport—basically an 11-month-a-year sport that requires an insane amount of travel, an insane amount of dealing with time zones. Then you have to have the right personality and the right, we say,&nbsp;passport—or you come from the right country—and the ability to communicate with people on a global scale.”



Authenticity remains another important factor, which Bal says starts with “don’t endorse Coca-Cola when you’re drinking Pepsi” but extends to aligning with brands that fit the image you’re trying to cultivate for yourself—the way that Federer made himself synonymous with luxury and Nadal cast himself as a rebel.



In addition, “social responsibility and cause marketing are more important now than they ever were before,” says Joe Favorito, a veteran marketing consultant and former executive with the WTA Tour and the U.S. Tennis Association. While the great Arthur Ashe was once questioned for talking about social issues, Osaka’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement and her statements about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2021/06/02/naomi-osaka-is-the-highest-paid-female-athlete-ever-and-her-french-open-exit-may-actually-help-her/">mental health</a>&nbsp;have made her even more valuable for brands, Favorito says.



Even with all of those boxes checked, there is no guarantee anyone will follow Federer to $1 billion in earnings. Players have to be willing to commit to their off-court endeavors, even amid the grind of the tennis schedule—and the teenaged Gauff, for instance, is taking a slow and steady approach as she develops as a player and a person. The 25-year-old Osaka, meanwhile, was once pegged as a perennial champion but has taken an unexpected detour over the last couple of years because of injuries and a recent pregnancy. “The story arc is never that simple because that’s real life,” says Stuart Duguid, who represents Osaka at Evolve, the talent agency they cofounded. “Life happens.”



Still, the number of talented players hitting their primes at once means exciting times ahead for the sport—and, presumably, for their wealth advisors.



“They all push each other, and they’re all friendly with each other,” Bal says. “[Ruud] got to Toronto early—he practiced with Medvedev, with Rune and with Sinner three consecutive days. So these guys are not shy, they’re playing with each other, they’re pushing each other, and it’s great for the sport.”

Western & Southern Open – Day 8

Tennis’ Big 3 And Serena Won 88 Majors And Made $2.5 Billion. A New Generation Is Ready For Their Shot.

<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h3>



Elon Musk claimed Wednesday X, formerly known as Twitter, could one day become a trillion dollar company, a stellar valuation that few companies have achieved, despite the major turmoil arising since the billionaire took the helm last October.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



One of Musk’s first moves after acquiring Twitter was to immediately lay off most of the company’s workforce—staff numbers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/12/twitter-and-elon-musk-face-500-million-lawsuit-for-allegedly-reusing-severance-for-fired-employees/">reportedly</a>&nbsp;fell from more than 7,500 to around 1,300—raising concerns the firm would not have enough staff to properly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/technology/twitter-outages-elon-musk.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">maintain</a>&nbsp;the platform,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/11/24/twitter-reportedly-leaves-brussels-europes-regulatory-hub-amid-concerns-about-musks-content-moderation-plans/">moderate content or comply</a>&nbsp;with regulatory requirements.



The abrupt nature of the layoffs and how they were handled have triggered numerous lawsuits from former employees that could end up&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/12/twitter-and-elon-musk-face-500-million-lawsuit-for-allegedly-reusing-severance-for-fired-employees/?sh=89bfd311d91c">costing</a>&nbsp;the platform hundreds of millions of dollars.



Unpopular policy changes, notably easing content moderation, implementing an&nbsp;<a href="https://mashable.com/article/half-of-twitter-blue-earliest-subscribers-no-longer-subscribed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unpopular paid subscription</a>&nbsp;and overhauling the identity verification system, spooked users and sparked chaos when impersonators abused the new system, with advertising revenue&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-traffic-falls-under-elon-musk-threads-mastodon-bluesky-competition/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plunging</a>&nbsp;as companies pulled ads.



Lawsuits from former staff are just a small fraction of X’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/07/12/twitter-troubles-here-are-all-the-big-legal-hurdles-twitters-faced-since-elon-musks-takeover/">legal woes</a>, which include numerous&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/07/03/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-unpaid-office-fees-again/?sh=2e30ea122613">reports</a>&nbsp;of unpaid office bills, a major copyright lawsuit for letting users post video and audio using copyrighted&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/06/14/twitter-sued-for-250-million-by-music-publishers-claiming-copyright-infringement/?sh=69657fb72d14">music</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a8281bf4-bd83-42ac-875f-9061ee1b357b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">potential brushes with regulators&nbsp;</a>failing to curb the spread of illegal content online and not paying&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/08/03/twitter-gets-sued-for-allegedly-not-complying-with-french-law-that-requires-it-to-pay-news-publishers/">news publishers for content</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/08/04/twitter-hq-landlord-paid-san-francisco-over-4000-in-fees-after-musks-team-installed-x-sign-on-roof/">fees</a>&nbsp;for installing a giant illuminated “X” sign on the roof of the company’s headquarters.



Tech issues have also plagued the platform since Musk’s arrival, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/13/23553161/third-party-twitter-clients-apps-outage-twitterific-tweetbot" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unexplained</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-reports-glitches-outages-1235667776/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">outages</a>, privacy&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/03/twitter-circle-glitches-have-users-worried-about-privacy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">glitches</a>, randomly&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/01/twitter-is-randomly-logging-out-users-youre-welcome/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">logging</a>&nbsp;out users,&nbsp;<a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/twitter-bug-marks-regular-users-as-spambots-restricting-their-accounts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">restrictions</a>&nbsp;on what users can see and throttling the number of posts users could see in a day.



X is also fending off a number of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/05/leaving-elon-musks-twitter-here-are-some-alternatives-from-meta-threads-to-mastodon-to-bluesky/">rivals</a>&nbsp;vying for Twitter’s spot, including Bluesky and Spill, headed by&nbsp;<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/13/tech/twitter-competitors/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">former employees</a>&nbsp;and notably Meta’s long awaited&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/04/metas-twitter-rival-threads-will-launch-thursday-as-chaos-continues-on-elon-musks-platform/">Threads</a>, which became the<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/10/with-100-million-users-in-five-days-threads-is-the-fastest-growing-app-in-history/">&nbsp;fastest growing app i</a>n history days after launching but has since seen a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/28/zuckerberg-implies-less-than-half-of-threads-users-have-stuck-around/?sh=678c145489cd">slump</a>&nbsp;in users.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news-peg">NEWS PEG</h2>



A trillion dollar market cap for X “is not out of the question,” Musk said in a post on Wednesday. It is not the first time the billionaire has made such a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/musk-tesla-could-be-trillion-dollar-company-and-other-predictions.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">prediction</a>&nbsp;and he has a reputation for making sometimes outlandish forecasts. The figure would be a substantial markup from the $44 billion Musk purchased Twitter for in 2022. In a matter of months, Twitter has undergone a drastic transformation, including a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/25/elon-musks-twitter-rebrand-sets-stage-for-everything-app-x-to-takeoff-experts-say-heres-how/">rebrand to X</a>. Musk changed the iconic bird logo, which experts told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;risks erasing billions in brand value. Though unconventional, the transformation signals a move towards transforming the platform into an “everything app” in the vein of China’s WeChat, something Musk has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/25/musk-says-x-name-change-is-a-result-of-his-push-to-build-an-everything-app/?sh=50e8e10675a1">been promising</a>&nbsp;to build a rival for. These superapps are like virtual Swiss army knives that combine features from multiple apps such as ride hailing, food delivery, payments, investing and messaging and they dominate markets in some parts of Asia where they are essentially ubiquitous in everyday life. There is significant&nbsp;<a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/financial-services/us-fsi-western-super-apps.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">potential</a>&nbsp;for such a model to take off in Western markets and experts&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/25/elon-musks-twitter-rebrand-sets-stage-for-everything-app-x-to-takeoff-experts-say-heres-how/">told</a>&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;the rebrand is an opportunity for Musk to add features to elevate the platform beyond social media.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



$231.2 billion. That’s how much&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=5c26ba107999">estimates</a>&nbsp;Musk is worth. He occupies the top position on&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;list of the world’s richest people, leading French luxury goods magnate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a>, who is in second place, by around $18 billion. Musk’s fortune is largely derived from his stake in electric carmaker Tesla and a cohort of valuable companies he cofounded, including rocket firm SpaceX, brain implant company Neuralink and tunneling firm Boring Company.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Very few companies have managed to hit a $1 trillion valuation but X would not be the first of Musk’s companies to reach that threshold. Tesla topped a $1 trillion market capitalization in&nbsp;<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/investing/tesla-stock-trillion-dollar-market-cap/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2021</a>, the sixth company in U.S. history to pass the milestone. Its value has since dropped well below that level, though is still valued at more than $730 billion.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/07/25/elon-musks-twitter-rebrand-sets-stage-for-everything-app-x-to-takeoff-experts-say-heres-how/">Elon Musk’s Twitter Rebrand Sets Stage For Everything App ‘X’ To Takeoff, Experts Say—Here’s How</a> (Forbes)

Tesla Officially Opens Gruenheide Gigafactory

Elon Musk Thinks X Could Become A Trillion Dollar Company—Here Are The Challenges Facing The Platform Since He Took Over

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Tech executives Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggested in June they’d be interested in clashing in a UFC-style cage fight, and egged each other on while tensions escalated between the two billionaires and their companies—but Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/13/zuckerberg-thinks-its-time-to-move-on-from-planned-cage-fight-with-musk-elon-isnt-serious/">downplayed the potential</a>&nbsp;of a billionaire brawl Sunday when he said Musk “isn’t serious” about picking a date.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The idea of a cage match was first posed by Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671364992665264131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over Twitter</a>, where the Tesla CEO responded to a thread about Instagram’s then-upcoming rival app Threads, saying, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”



Zuckerberg responded the next day with an Instagram story showing a screenshot of Musk’s tweet captioned “send me location”—a reference to a famous line from former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov (a Meta spokesperson confirmed to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/21/23769263/mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-fight-cage-match-worldstar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Verge</a>&nbsp;that Zuckerberg was being serious in his response to Musk).



As hype around a potential fight picked up, UFC president Dana White joined in on the anticipation, posting a video of himself sporting a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuCyF4HJQut/?img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zuckerberg vs Musk shirt</a>&nbsp;that was made available for purchase on the UFC’s website.



White was quoted in a July 1 story from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-match.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>&nbsp;saying he would help organize an exhibition match between the tech CEOs and that they both wanted to fight—with both men agreeing there should be a charity component to the bout.



On July 3, photos of Musk training with UFC legend Georges St. Pierre, mixed martial arts coach John Danaher and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt Lex Fridman surfaced online—with an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CuQLly_vqrT/?img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Instagram post</a>&nbsp;from St. Pierre showing the four men in training gear.



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Zuckerberg, who is trained in the grappling combat discipline of Jiu-jitsu, also employed the training services of elite fighting talent in July—made evident by&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/stylebender/status/1678848822041255937" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gym photos</a>&nbsp;taken with UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski on July 11.



The two billionaires reinvigorated interest in a potential match in early August, when Musk said he was weightlifting to prepare for the fight, suggesting it would be live-streamed on X—the rebranded Twitter platform—and that all proceeds would go to a charity for veterans.



Zuckerberg responded to Musk’s posts via Threads, asking if a “more reliable platform” should be used for a live-stream of the fight and adding he was “not holding his breath” for a fight to materialize.



Although Zuckerberg has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/CvnechDSJeC" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made clear</a>&nbsp;he is ready for a match, the same can’t be said for Musk, who said the date is “still in flux” and he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688377445957652480?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">may need surgery</a>&nbsp;before a fight can happen.



Days after calling the idea “in flux,” Musk said the Italian government agreed to an “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/08/11/elon-musk-says-italian-government-approved-epic-location-for-his-billionaire-clash-against-mark-zuckerberg/?sh=1d1742f043f9">epic location</a>” for a fight that would be managed by his and Zuckerberg’s respective foundations, not the UFC.



Zuckerberg shot down Musk’s plans, saying, “if he ever agrees on an actual date, you&#8217;ll hear it from me,” adding that he’d prefer to work with professional fight promotions such as UFC and ONE.



Just days after Zuckerberg expressed hesitation about Musk’s commitment to the match, the Meta CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/13/zuckerberg-thinks-its-time-to-move-on-from-planned-cage-fight-with-musk-elon-isnt-serious/">posted on Threads</a>&nbsp;on August 13 “it’s time to move on” because Musk won’t confirm a date, adding Musk said he needs surgery—and months of recovery—before fighting and wanted to do a practice round in Zuckerberg’s backyard.



The same day Zuckerberg announced the desire to move on, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1690747345674137600" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">posted</a>&nbsp;a screenshot to X of the purported conversation in which he suggested a practice round; Zuckerberg responded over text telling him he should train on his own and say when he’s ready to compete, adding he doesn’t “want to keep hyping something that will never happen.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



In the background of Musk and Zuckerberg fight-related banter, tensions between the two have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2023/07/09/billionaire-brawl-now-whos-winning-the-fight-between-musk-and-zuckerberg/?sh=11d0221d26bc">increased</a>&nbsp;following the launch of Instagram’s Threads platform, a direct competitor to Twitter that launched July 5 and racked up its first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/10/with-100-million-users-in-five-days-threads-is-the-fastest-growing-app-in-history/?sh=287d252549ab">100 million users</a>&nbsp;on July 10. That same day, Musk called Zuckerberg a “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/10/musk-hits-below-the-belt-with-latest-zuckerberg-attacks-zuck-is-a-cuck/?sh=356527f622ee">cuck</a>” over Twitter and proposed a “dick measuring contest” with him. An attorney for Twitter accused and threatened to sue Meta for allegedly misusing Twitter’s &#8220;trade secrets and other intellectual property&#8221; and employing former Twitter staffers for help with developing Threads, labeling it as a “copycat” app of Twitter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



Musk biographer Walter Isaacson later claimed in a Twitter Spaces session that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-fight-match-unlikely-walter-isaacson-2023-7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he doubted</a>&nbsp;a fight would happen and that it was “a metaphor” for the competition between the CEOs’ rivaling social media sites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



-160. That was the&nbsp;<a href="https://dknation.draftkings.com/pop-culture/2023/6/22/23769810/mark-zuckerberg-vs-elon-musk-odds-cage-fight-who-will-win-wheres-the-asteroid" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hypothetical line</a>&nbsp;DraftKings set in June for Zuckerberg to win the match, making him the betting favorite, with bettors needing to wager $160 on Zuckerberg to return a $100 profit. DraftKings set the odds for a Musk upset at +140, meaning a $100 bet would deliver a $140 profit. The sports betting company attributed the lines to Zuckerberg’s younger age and his regular physical activity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



A cage match between the tech CEOs might involve some parameters to account for their difference in size. Notably, Musk told White that he would not be willing to “lose any weight” for a potential matchup. Musk, 52, stands around 6’1” tall and has made clear on Twitter that he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671699387620237312" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">almost never works out</a>. Zuckerberg, 39, is 5 &#8216;7” and regularly takes to physical training and competition, recently securing two medals in his first&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/09/business/mark-zuckerberg-jiu-jitsu-winner/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jiu-jitsu tournament</a>&nbsp;in May, though he was also choked out in one of his fights, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/style/mark-zuckerberg-workout.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>&nbsp;(Zuckerberg has denied the claim). Zuckerberg also seems to be the more avid fight fan, as he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, attended a UFC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.insider.com/video-mark-zuckerberg-attends-ufc-event-priscilla-chan-looks-shook-2022-10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fight card</a>&nbsp;last October.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuation">FORBES VALUATION</h2>



We estimate Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?list=rtb/&amp;sh=5a59a8f87999">$225.2 billion</a>. Zuckerberg’s net worth is estimated at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=350141a23e06">$107 billion</a>—placing him at No. 8 on&nbsp;Forbes’ list of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#7b288cfb3d78">world’s real-time billionaires</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/07/11/mark-zuckerberg-training-with-ufc-champions-israel-adesanya-and-alexander-volkanovski-as-elon-musk-spat-intensifies/?sh=52e0cfd75d9a">Mark Zuckerberg Training With UFC Champions Israel Adesanya And Alexander Volkanovski As Elon Musk Spat Intensifies</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-match.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A ‘Cage Match’ Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg May Be No Joke</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/10/musk-hits-below-the-belt-with-latest-zuckerberg-attacks-zuck-is-a-cuck/?sh=356527f622ee">Musk Hits Below The Belt With Latest Zuckerberg Attacks: ‘Zuck Is A Cuck’</a> (Forbes)

Elon Musk Vs Mark Zuckerberg Illustration

Zuckerberg Vs Musk: Disputes Heat Up Over Billionaire Cage Fight—Here’s Everything We Know

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Elon Musk’s fortune took a major hit Thursday after the share price of his electric vehicle titan Tesla suffered its biggest slide in three months, as the world’s richest person navigates yet another massive swing for Tesla.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Musk’s net worth slipped from $256.8 billion to $238.4 billion Thursday, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ calculations.



The staggering losses came after Tesla stock tanked nearly 10% as investors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/07/20/tesla-stock-takes-6-post-earnings-dive-heres-why-some-say-its-860-billion-valuation-is-disconnected-from-reality/?sh=d44f9eec0770">reacted sourly</a>&nbsp;to the automaker’s second quarter earnings report released after market close Wednesday.



The Tesla CEO’s lead as the wealthiest man on the planet shrank from $23 billion to $3 billion, putting Musk in jeopardy of once again losing his crown to LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, who was richer than Musk for a roughly six-month stretch from early December to last month.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/article/elon-musk/?sh=1af47a0926af">About 60%</a>&nbsp;of Musk’s net worth comes from his roughly 13% in Tesla, a third from his stake in private aerospace and communications giant SpaceX and less than 10% from his ownership of Twitter.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



During Wednesday’s&nbsp;<a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4618254-tesla-inc-tsla-q2-2023-earnings-call-transcript" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">conference call&nbsp;</a>with Tesla investors, Musk likened Tesla’s massive stock swings to a 2015&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tagged/health/exclusive-warren-buffett-says-mr-125010039.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analogy</a>&nbsp;from Warren Buffett in which the famed investor said owning shares in a public company can feel like there’s an imaginary “drunken psycho” dictating the value of said stake. “Imagine living in your house and some crazy manic-depressive guy comes and stands outside your house and yells property prices at you, and it’s a different price every day,” Musk said. “But the house is still the same house.”



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-fact">SURPRISING FACT</h2>



Tesla stock’s two biggest daily losses over the last six months occurred in the first trading sessions following the release of Tesla’s sole 2023 earnings reports (Thursday and April 20).



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/07/20/tesla-stock-takes-6-post-earnings-dive-heres-why-some-say-its-860-billion-valuation-is-disconnected-from-reality/?sh=d44f9eec0770">Tesla Stock Takes 9% Post-Earnings Dive—Here’s Why Some Say Its $840 Billion Valuation Is ‘Disconnected From Reality’</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/article/elon-musk/?sh=1af47a0926af">Behind The Billions: Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/19/heres-how-teslas-stock-performed-after-its-last-10-earnings-reports/?sh=52553ba51871">Here’s How Tesla’s Stock Performed After Its Last 10 Earnings Reports</a> (Forbes)

Elon Musk Got $18 Billion Poorer Thursday As Tesla Stock Faltered

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Tesla CEO Elon Musk reclaimed his throne as the richest man on earth Thursday, wrestling the title away from LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault as shares of Musk’s electric vehicle giant surged to their highest level this year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Tesla stock rallied 4.6% to $235 in Thursday trading, notching its 10th straight day of gains.



Musk’s firm is on pace for its highest closing share price since October 6, 2022.



After cratering to a two-year low in early January, Tesla shares are up nearly 115%, the third-largest return of any company in the S&amp;P 500, which is up 12% this year.



That rally has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2023/06/07/elon-musk-becomes-worlds-richest-person-again/?sh=54a20bdf4ca4">propelled</a>&nbsp;Musk to once again become the richest person on the planet, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ calculations, pegging Musk’s net worth to be $220.2 billion, $4.2 billion bigger than Arnault’s by market close.



On Wednesday, Musk briefly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2023/06/07/elon-musk-becomes-worlds-richest-person-again/?sh=54a20bdf4ca4">topped</a>&nbsp;Arnault for the first time since December, though he slid below Arnault again by market close.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contra">CONTRA</h2>



Despite the sustained rally, shares of Tesla remain more than 40% below their November 2021 peak of $410, far underperforming the S&amp;P’s 6% loss during the period.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



After surging during the pandemic, Tesla stock faltered dramatically last year as investors&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/01/02/tesla-says-it-delivered-record-936172-electric-vehicles-in-2021/?sh=5f3657494d8b">soured</a>&nbsp;on the company’s promises of near limitless growth and Musk’s affair with Twitter, the social media platform he controversially bought last year for $44 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/12/16/market-reacts-to-musk-antics-tesla-slides-to-2-year-low-as-twitter-embroiled-in-controversy/?sh=65f1706b15fd">pulling away</a>&nbsp;the billionaire’s time and financial resources from Tesla. Wall Street began to regain faith in Tesla after the firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/25/tesla-posts-best-ever-quarterly-revenue-and-profit/?sh=7db6e03437d1">reported</a>&nbsp;record quarterly revenue and earnings in January, setting forth a rally that gradually gained steam as Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-elon-musk-twitter-ceo-81418315" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">found</a>&nbsp;a replacement as Twitter CEO and played nice with lawmakers in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/elon-musk-meets-top-biden-admin-officials-discuss-electrification-goals-2023-01-27/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">U.S.</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2023/05/31/musk-visit-highlights-business-role--in-us-china-ties---amcham-china-president/?sh=4f79f55018ca">China</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-emmanuel-macron-france-gets-red-carpet-treatment-amid-green-investment-push/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">beyond</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Tesla, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/article/elon-musk/">accounts for</a>&nbsp;a majority of Musk’s fortune, may be booming, but Twitter is amidst a far gloomier stretch as Musk’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/04/17/musk-admits-twitter-purchase-wasnt-financially-smart-and-he-paid-twice-what-its-worth/?sh=5e12024b65c6">efforts</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/elon-musk-says-twitter-can-be-most-valuable-company-in-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">transform</a>&nbsp;the company into the most valuable company on earth. The&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;reported Monday Twitter’s advertising revenues were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/06/05/twitters-us-ad-sales-down-59-despite-musks-breaking-even-claims-report-says/?ss=topadvisorshook&amp;sh=709385e4572c">down 59%</a>&nbsp;this April compared to the year prior, while Fidelity said last week it values Twitter at about&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/05/30/fidelity-values-twitter-at-roughly-15-billion-a-third-of-the-sticker-price-paid-by-musk/?sh=65649d1e13e7">$15 billion</a>, about a third of the sticker price Musk paid last year.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2023/06/07/elon-musk-becomes-worlds-richest-person-again/?sh=54a20bdf4ca4">Elon Musk Briefly Becomes World’s Richest Person Again</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/06/02/tesla-stock-hits-4-month-high-as-elon-musks-net-worth-soars/?sh=1329c9c26b91">Tesla Stock Hits 4-Month High As Elon Musk&#8217;s Net Worth Soars</a> (Forbes)

Elon

Elon Musk Ends Day As World’s Richest Person For First Time In 6 Months

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The already stuffed wallets of several billionaire insiders at Alphabet grew even fatter Thursday as shares of Google’s parent company rallied, after the company’s Wednesday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/05/10/google-io-2023-ai/?sh=448f91e95704">announcement</a>&nbsp;of various new artificial intelligence features—capped by integrating AI into Google’s search engine——largely cooled investors’ fears about a wide gap in the AI space between Google and rival Microsoft.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Alphabet’s stock surged more than 4% Thursday, bringing its two-day gain to 9% following CEO Sundar Pichai’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/10/google-adding-ai-to-search-engine-for-some-users-closing-in-on-microsofts-ai-push/?sh=73fba5123502">presentation</a>&nbsp;introducing a variety of ways the company plans to utilize AI in its search engine and beyond.



Shares of the Silicon Valley stalwart are now at their highest level since August.



Google demonstrated “AI powered search can still be the gateway” to online activity and drive advertising revenue growth, according to Bank of America analysts Justin Post and Joanna Zhao, deeming Wednesday’s presentation “a positive step in changing the AI narrative” that Microsoft and its ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">better-positioned</a>&nbsp;to cash in on the AI craze.



Alphabet’s market capitalization swelled by nearly $120 billion over the last two trading sessions, solidifying its place as the fourth-most valuable public company in the world.



Largely reaping the benefits of the stock surge are Google’s billionaire current and former executives who added a total of more than $9 billion, including cofounders and board members Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who added $4.1 billion and $3.9 billion to their fortunes Thursday, respectively.



Fellow Alphabet board members Ravitark Ram Shriram and John Doerr added about $330 million to their combined fortunes Thursday, while early Google investor David Cheriton and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt grew more than $900 million richer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuations">FORBES VALUATIONS</h2>



Page (worth $99.6 billion) and Brin ($95.3 billion) are the seventh- and 10th-richest people in the world, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ real-time billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5ce0a38e3d78">tracker</a>. Page’s fortune surpassed that of Microsoft mogul Steve Ballmer and Mexican media magnate Carlos Slim Helu on Thursday, while Brin’s wealth pile surged past those of L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and financial data king Michael Bloomberg.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Alphabet has the “leading collection of AI/machine learning-driven businesses” of any technology company, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Eric Sheridan wrote in a Wednesday note to clients, adding the latest rollout caused the bank to become “increasingly constructive” on Alphabet’s long-term business strategy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



The freshly announced generative AI improvements are a “positive [step] in the AI battle” against Microsoft, but Alphabet continues to operate in “major catchup mode,” according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. Microsoft’s early investment in ChatGPT parent OpenAI gave it a “key head start” in the field that could prove challenging for Alphabet to overcome in the struggle for market share, Ives added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November to significant fanfare and was integrated into Bing in February, shortly after Microsoft&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/23/chatgpt-parent-open-ai-gets-game-changing-multibillion-dollar-boost-from-microsoft/">announced</a>&nbsp;it made a multibillion-dollar equity investment in OpenAI. Many&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/03/10/google-peacetime-ceo-sundar-pichai/?sh=359f71584ab1">considered</a>&nbsp;Google’s early response to the AI-fueled stiffer search competition to be subpar, with Alphabet shares&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">sliding</a>&nbsp;as much as 10% in the months following ChatGPT’s rollout.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/05/10/google-io-2023-ai/?sh=448f91e95704">Google Tries To Straddle Being &#8216;Bold&#8217; And &#8216;Responsible&#8217; In AI Product Blitz</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/05/10/google-adding-ai-to-search-engine-for-some-users-closing-in-on-microsofts-ai-push/?sh=73fba5123502">Google Adding AI To Search Engine For Some Users—Closing In On Microsoft&#8217;s AI Push</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2023/03/10/google-peacetime-ceo-sundar-pichai/?sh=359f71584ab1">Google’s ‘Peacetime’ CEO Sundar Pichai Faces Criticism As The AI War Heats Up</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/04/17/google-stock-loses-57-billion-amid-microsofts-ai-lead-and-reports-it-could-be-replaced-by-bing-on-some-smartphones/?sh=7943e0145b07">Google Stock Loses $57 Billion Amid Microsoft’s AI ‘Lead’—And Reports It Could Be Replaced By Bing On Some Smartphones</a> (Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/"></a>By Derek Saul, Forbes Staff

FRANCE-ECONOMY-TECHNOLOGY-VIVATECH

Google Insiders Are $9 Billion Richer After AI-Fueled Stock Rally

Kazadi emigrated to South Africa as a child from DR Congo and built a digital marketing agency in his adopted country. In early May last year, the 29-year-old died under murky circumstances.



On April 28, 2022, Christian Kazadi was enjoying a sunrise safari in Botswana. Sporting a corduroy fleece jacket, shorts and white sneakers in an Instagram post from that day, Kazadi smiles as he leans back on a jeep, calling it a “bucket list experience.”



The 29-year-old founder of Johannesburg, South Africa-based digital marketing agency Click Media was in Botswana to attend the first ever&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Under 30 Africa summit. It was a professional milestone for Kazadi, who had launched Click Media in 2016 with the last $30 in his bank account and bootstrapped it into a thriving business that ran social media campaigns for clients ranging from ESPN and Adidas to the National Basketball Association and KFC. Kazadi, who had yet to appear on&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;30 Under 30 list, was thrilled to have been awarded a spot at the conference.



But that Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc45W7Cq0CC/">post </a>was his last. Four days later, he was found dead in police custody 1,100 miles away in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.



A year later, Kazadi’s mysterious death remains unsolved. His family is still trying to piece together what happened to him between April 30—when he was set to return to South Africa—and May 2, when he died in Kinshasa. Investigations in South Africa and DR Congo are at a standstill, and no one—not the airport officials in South Africa that denied his entry nor the Congolese police that may have been involved in his death—has provided any answers.



“He never made it back home from the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;event,” says Patrick Kazadi, Christian’s younger brother and cofounder and CEO of Click Media. “[We need] answers so the family can finally finish the grieving process and put the people who did this to justice.”



During his brief time in Botswana, Kazadi’s energy and entrepreneurial spirit made him stand out among his peers. &#8220;Even those who met him over the few days of the summit will convey how deeply they were touched by him,&#8221; says Pholo Kimbuende, a senior management consultant at consulting firm Guidehouse, who met Kazadi at the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Under 30 event. &#8220;The future just looked so bright, and the circumstances around his death were just utterly devastating.&#8221;



The mystery began on April 30, when Kazadi’s flight from Botswana landed in Johannesburg at 10:45 am. He wasn’t allowed to enter South Africa, despite having lived in the country since 2001 and possessing a valid work visa that ran from 2020 to 2023.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;spoke to multiple friends and family members of Kazadi who confirmed he had previously traveled from South Africa to other African countries before and had never had any issues returning, although it is not entirely uncommon for immigrants to have difficulties at the South African border.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;also called and spoke to several officials at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, but they didn’t provide any information on Kazadi and instead referred questions to South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs. Home Affairs suggested that the family file a public records request, which they did but have yet to receive a response.



Kazadi was then made to book a flight to Kinshasa, DR Congo the following day. He arrived just past midnight on May 2. A Congolese citizen, Kazadi was born in the country but hadn’t been back since leaving with his family in 2001, when they emigrated to South Africa to seek asylum as refugees.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“There’s foul play at hand. He was in Congo for less than 24 hours and he was murdered.”
<cite>Patrick Kazadi</cite></blockquote>



Later that day, a bizarre video appeared online, showing Kazadi behaving erratically at a funeral in Kinshasa. The video appears to show Kazadi getting inside the casket with his headphones on and shouting “Guelor,” the name of the deceased person at the funeral—who Kazadi apparently did not know, although Guelor happens to be the name of one of Kazadi’s younger brothers. People then appeared to surround him and drag him away from the casket. Kazadi was arrested at the funeral and held in a detention center, where a family friend went to check up on him on the night of May 2.



The next morning, Kazadi was dead. “There’s foul play at hand,” says Patrick. “He was in Congo for less than 24 hours and he was murdered.”



Photos and videos provided by Kazadi’s family and seen by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;show Kazadi lying on what appears to be a road, shirtless and with deep cuts and welts on his head, arms, chest and feet indicating that he may have been tortured. In one of the photos, a Congolese policeman or soldier is seen standing in the background.



A member of the family that was hosting the funeral, who had urged the police to arrest him at the time, was called into the police station about a week after his death and gave the police her phone number. When they tried to get in touch with her in the following days, the police told Kazadi’s family that the number was disconnected.



Kazadi’s family told Forbes that the police officers who arrested him were briefly detained in May last year as local authorities investigated what happened, but no charges have been filed. Unfortunately, death at the hands of the police isn’t uncommon in DR Congo. 133 people died in detention in the country in the first six months of 2022, according to the<a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/415610_CONGO-DEM-REP-2022-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> United Nations Joint Human Rights Office.</a>



A year after Kazadi’s death, the investigation has gone nowhere. Captain Parfait and Colonel Honoré of the Congolese National Police, the officers in charge of the investigation in the Matete district of Kinshasa, have told the Kazadi family’s lawyer that the case file for the investigation has gone missing. Neither responded to questions from&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;about the status of the investigation.



“If it was the police that murdered him, of course they would get rid of the docket,” says Patrick. “The court case hasn’t even started because they currently can’t locate the docket file.”



In South Africa, Kazadi’s mother submitted a public records request to the Department of Home Affairs last July for information on why he was denied entry into the country. Under South African law, government agencies must respond to requests within 30 days, with the option of a single extension of no more than 30 additional days. But 296 days after the family initially submitted its request—and despite being repeatedly contacted by both Forbes and Kazadi’s family over the course of several months—the ministry has yet to provide an update.



Still, asylum seekers and immigrants with visas often face harassment from South African authorities. In its<a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/415610_SOUTH-AFRICA-2022-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;2022 human rights report on South Africa</a>, the U.S. State Department wrote that “security forces arbitrarily arrested migrants and asylum seekers, including those with proper documentation, often because police were unfamiliar with migrant and asylum documentation.&#8221;



The lack of progress on the investigations has also resulted in plenty of conspiracy theories online, with YouTube videos viewed more than a million times speculating that Kazadi was drugged or part of a cult. “They have a lot of incorrect facts,” says Patrick. “A lot of people in Congo don’t know what is going on.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Ever since he arrived in South Africa at age 9 in 2001, Christian Kazadi worked hard to improve his life. He emigrated to Johannesburg with his mother and younger brothers to join his father, Samuel, a pastor and IT teacher who had already been living there for two years. Tragedy struck in 2007 when Samuel died while on a business trip to DR Congo, leaving the family without a breadwinner. (The cause of death isn’t known.)



The local church raised money to pay for the family’s rent, and his mother started selling clothes and toys at a flea market. But his father’s death forced Christian—then just 15 years old—to help provide for his family. He sold snacks at school during the week and packed meat at a grocery store on the weekends with his younger brother Patrick. Eventually he convinced the store to hire his mother as a cleaner, so she could stay closer to home instead of traveling to sell goods at different markets.



“It was nothing like close to minimum wage, but it was constant,” says Patrick. “That’s what started Chris’ mentality for entrepreneurship and hustling.”



Those wages helped them move to a larger house in 2011, where the family of five shared one room and subleased the other three rooms to make extra money. Chris was also a strong athlete in high school, placing in national competitions for track and field and basketball.



“We would sit at home and cut boxes and stack them up and put them as soles in our shoes,” says Patrick. “He would walk five kilometers to the closest court and play ball.”



Kazadi’s dream was to play professionally in the NBA, and he wrote in his application for the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;Under 30 event that he won a scholarship to play college basketball in New York after graduating from high school in 2012—but his family couldn’t afford to pay for his trip to the U.S.



There also wasn’t enough money for Chris to attend college at home, and they couldn’t apply for government scholarships that were reserved for South African citizens. Instead he kept working at butcheries, making about 300 rand—roughly $30 at the time—in tips on a good day and doing other odd jobs like frying meat. He also landed an unpaid internship managing social media for South African professional basketball player KP Ndlovu that year, running the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube accounts for his company Loqdown Productions, which organizes basketball tournaments for young players in Johannesburg.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Chris was a warrior and a soldier. I’m so proud of what he did and the legacy and empire he built and left behind.”
<cite>Joe Arrangement</cite></blockquote>



Kazadi’s luck started to turn the following year, when South Africa launched the professional Basketball National League (BNL). His work for Ndlovu caught the attention of FX Productions, a small marketing agency that managed social media for the BNL. He got hired to create social media content for the league, earning enough money to support his family and allow his mother to quit her cleaning job.



By January 2016, Kazadi was ready to strike out on his own. Against his mother’s wishes, he quit his job to take advantage of his own connections with the league and its teams to launch his own marketing firm. As an asylum seeker at the time, he couldn’t register the company himself. So he relied on a South African friend and used his entire savings—$30 at the time—to register the new company, which he named Click Media Productions.



His first idea was to host basketball tournaments, using his connections at the BNL to convince brands to sponsor his events. But the costs of organizing them—paying for kits, referees and venues—added up, leaving Kazadi in debt. So he turned back to focusing on social media, eventually making enough money to pay back the debt.



By 2017, the firm had grown enough that it was hosting regular tournaments. The first big break came that year, when Click Media handled digital marketing for the NBA Africa Game, which brought NBA stars like Dirk Nowitzki and Luol Deng to play in Johannesburg.



That growth allowed him to make his first hires to manage the firm’s new clients, which began to sign long-term contracts with Click Media. “This was my first official job, and it&#8217;s all because of Chris,&#8221; says Kaymo Moeti, who worked as a social media manager at Click Media from 2017 to 2018 and now runs marketing for a hip hop festival. “Everything that I learned, I learned from him. He&#8217;s the one that really taught me what I knew to help me get those opportunities.&#8221;



Click Media worked on the next NBA Africa Game in 2018, and the exposure helped put the company on the map, leading to new social media campaigns for clients ranging from ride-hailing app Bolt to rapper Lil Yachty. That same year, he obtained a South African work visa through Click Media. In December 2021, the company was named the best digital marketing agency in Johannesburg at the MEA Business Awards, organized by MEA Markets, a business publication focused on the Middle East and Africa.



&#8220;Chris was a warrior and a soldier,&#8221; says Joe Arrangement, a musician and music promoter who worked with Kazadi and Click Media. &#8220;I&#8217;m so proud of what he did and the legacy and empire he built and left behind.&#8221;



In March 2022, Click Media ran a social media campaign for cognac brand Hennessy and the NBA at a basketball court in Zoo Lake, Johannesburg. In an Instagram post from the video shoot, Kazadi hyped it up for his followers: &#8220;We got something really exciting coming to Zoo Lake soon,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;With some of your favorite celebrities.&#8221;



Two months later, he was gone.



Click Media is now run by his brother Patrick, who wants to carry Christian’s legacy forward and keep growing the company until it achieves his vision of becoming the top digital marketing agency in Africa.



&#8220;As the CEO of Click Media, with the good God&#8217;s grace and blessing, I will complete that which we started,” Patrick said in an emotional tribute to his brother at his memorial service last June. “Kazadi lives.”



The Kazadi family has a<a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-christian-kazadi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> GoFundMe page</a> to raise funds to pay for legal fees for investigating Christian&#8217;s death and to provide financial support for the family.



By Giacomo Tognini, Forbes Staff

Chris Kazadi

The Mysterious, Unsolved Murder Of Under 30 African Social Media Entrepreneur Christian Kazadi

Red Black Fitness & Gym Presentation Template

AFRICA’S RICHEST PEOPLE 2023

An Enron-like accounting scandal at South Africa-based furniture group Steinhoff International wiped out billions of retail tycoon Wiese’s fortune. After a four-year battle, he’s back as one of Africa’s richest, and at peace with the world.



Christoffel “Christo” Wiese exudes an air of calm that betrays no hint of the chaos that turned his world turned upside down for more than four years.



In December 2017, the then-76-year-old South African billionaire was informed about serious accounting fraud at retailer Steinhoff International, where he was both chairman and the largest shareholder. Those irregularities turned out to total $7.4 billion in falsified transactions over a span of nine years from 2009 to 2017, a PwC investigation found–making the Steinhoff affair the South African equivalent of the 2001 Enron debacle.



Steinhoff International had acquired Wiese’s discount clothing retailer, Pepkor, in 2015 for $5.7 billion in stock and cash; and he became its chairman a year later in May 2016. Wiese stepped down as chairman in mid-December 2017, soon after the accounting fraud was made public. While it was eventually proven that Weise had no role in the fraud, the 90% drop in the share price of Steinhoff–by far Wiese’s most valuable asset–pummelled his fortune, from an estimated $5.6 billion in March 2017 to $1.1 billion on the 2018 Forbes list of Africa’s billionaires and then off the ranks altogether by the time Forbes’ World Billionaires list came out a few months later that year.



Now, following a multi-year legal battle that ended in a $500 million settlement consisting of cash and stock, Wiese is back on Forbes’ newly released <a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/africa-billionaires/">2023 list of Africa’s billionaires</a>, tied at No. 18 with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion.



Asked about his ordeal last week, Wiese described his initial reaction–and what he’s grateful for. “It came as a huge shock to discover that this [Steinhoff] fraud was in the core of the business,” Wiese recalled in a Teams video call from his office in Cape Town, South Africa. The other shock? “That the people who were committing the fraud managed to get through all the gatekeepers,” he added, ticking them off: internal auditors, external auditor Deloitte, the South African Reserve Bank, international banks that were lending Steinhoff billions of rand, the South African and Frankfurt, Germany stock exchanges (where the company’s shares trade) and the ratings agencies.



What did Wiese know? Nothing, he insists. “People said, ‘But Christo, you were the chairman.’ And I said I chaired four board meetings in the entire time,” Wiese explained. “I am supposed to know what all the other gatekeepers missed?”



Despite his comments, Wiese–and the investment community–had been alerted to concerns about Steinhoff as early as a decade before the furniture seller admitted its problems. In 2007, Sean Holmes, a South Africa-based analyst for JP Morgan, published a critical 56-page report that questioned Steinhoff’s earnings and pointed to poor financial disclosure and a lack of transparency, according to the 2018 book Steinheist: Markus Jooste, Steinhoff &amp; SA’s Biggest Corporate Fraud. The book also recounts a 2009 meeting Wiese had with an analyst at a different firm who shared 40 slides that delved into concerns such as Steinhoff’s inflated assets and its “suspiciously low tax rate.” (That was years before he sold his company to Steinhoff). Then in 2015, right before Steinhoff shifted its primary stock listing to Frankfurt, a German tax authority raised concerns about the company’s accounting. Wiese said a forensic accounting firm the board hired shortly afterward failed to find any issues.



In fact, Wiese had demonstrated supreme confidence in Steinhoff as a business (or took a huge risk, depending on your perspective). In September 2016, he borrowed $1.8 billion from banks to finance the purchase of more shares in Steinhoff, lifting his ownership stake from nearly 20% to 25%. To guarantee the loans, Wiese pledged the vast majority of his Steinhoff shares as collateral. When Steinhoff stock tanked at the end of 2017, the banks took control of his shares. The loan transaction was ring fenced around the Steinhoff shares, so that in case of default, the banks could not go after Wiese’s other assets, a spokesperson for Wiese said.



Markus Jooste, a South African and the former CEO of Steinhoff International–who ran the company during the years of the accounting fraud, will be tried in Germany in April, South African media reported on Friday. In the spring of 2021, German prosecutors were reported to have charged Jooste and three colleagues with balance sheet fraud. Jooste, who has denied the allegations in the past, could not be reached for comment.



Altogether, Wiese claimed he was defrauded out of $5 billion (59 billion Rand) and sued Steinhoff for that amount in 2018. It took until late January 2022 for Steinhoff to get South African and Dutch courts (Steinhoff is headquartered in Amsterdam) to sign off on its settlement for shareholders–Wiese and thousands of others–and creditors. Wiese’s roughly $500 million (8 billion Rand) settlement came in the form of cash plus a 5% stake in listed retailer Pepkor Holdings (which is now 51% owned by Steinhoff International). Wiese says he accepted far less than he initially sought, partly to put a halt to the negotiations, which kept dragging on. Steinhoff funded the settlement with Pepkor shares and cash raised from selling off assets–though it still owns 50% of U.S. company MattressFirm and a few other holdings.



Wiese was never in danger of losing his fortune entirely. Besides his Steinhoff stake, he owns more than 10% of listed supermarket chain Shoprite Holdings, Africa’s largest retailer–a kind of South African Walmart, with a hard focus on low prices. It had $10.7 billion revenues in the most recent fiscal year, 145,000 employees and nearly 3,000 stores across southern Africa. In the wake of the Steinhoff accounting nightmare, Wiese sold off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of his Shoprite shares, lowering his stake from 18% in 2017.



Other Wiese holdings include industrial investing firm Invicta Holdings, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which has investments in China, Singapore, the U.K. and a small business in the U.S. Via another firm, Tradehold Ltd., he owns industrial businesses in South Africa and commercial property in the U.K. And through Luxembourg-listed firm Brait PLC, Wiese owns stakes in Virgin Active health clubs and two South African firms: a fashion label and a consumer goods business.



“Christo has been a massive risk taker his whole life,&#8221; Syd Vianello, a retail analyst in Johannesburg, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2016/03/01/the-billionaire-african-behind-the-continents-greatest-retail-empire/?sh=14de17223a7a">a March 2016 profile of Wiese</a>. “Africa is not a place for sissies.” Wiese, who calls himself an incurable optimist, agrees. “I’ve been in business for 55 years,” he says. “I just accept that the world is always difficult.”



Wiese’s journey to become Africa’s biggest retail tycoon took a meandering path. After attending Stellenbosch University, he started working for his cousin’s husband’s discount firm PEP in 1970. Four years later he decided he wasn’t good at working for someone else, and wanted a job that required less hours so he could start a family. Following a detour that included buying, running and then selling a diamond mine, Wiese went back to his cousin, who’d grown PEP and added Shoprite, a grocery chain, and offered to buy him out. The cousin accepted.



He focused on maintaining low prices and serving poor customers of all races–at a time of apartheid. In 1986, Wiese spun off Shoprite and PEP (now called Pepkor) into separate public companies, maintaining control of both. By 2014, Wiese says he controlled the two largest retail businesses in South Africa, and there was really no way to grow more domestically due to antitrust concerns.



That is when he turned to Steinhoff, which did business in Europe and South Africa. “I came to the conclusion that here was a business with a very strong balance sheet, strong cash flows, experienced management and international operations,” he recalled. It didn’t turn out that way.



Now 81, Wiese said he has no plans to retire. “I nearly died in 2021 with Covid, so I’ve come to realize that I’m not necessarily destined to live forever. But my problem is I don’t play golf or do stuff like that. For me, my business is my pleasure.”



Plus he certainly has no desire for Steinhoff to be his final chapter.



“I was not going to let this almost unbelievable disaster spoil my life,” Weise reflected on the Steinhoff matter. “I have a lot to be grateful for. I love my country, I’ve got a wonderful family, wonderful friends. I just decided to carry on with my life.”



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/">Kerry A. Dolan</a>

How South Africa’s Christo Wiese Sued His Way Back Into The Billionaire Ranks

Billionaire money manager Ron Baron has overseen decades of stellar returns, in large part because he is an optimist. He has remained steadfastly bullish in his approach to long-term <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/how-to-invest-in-stocks/">investing in stocks</a>, which have risen greatly since he started his fund 40 years ago. The mutual fund manager he started with $10 million under management in 1982, Baron Capital, now oversees roughly $50 billion in some 19 funds. Baron has amassed a net worth of nearly $5 billion thanks to his strong track record and long-term asset appreciation. Baron is also famous among Wall Street fund managers for his annual investment conference, which has featured entertainment from dozens of stars, including Jerry Seinfeld, Bon Jovi, Chris Rock and Mariah Carey.



Despite this year’s market turmoil, Baron remains undeterred, with the buy-and-hold investor still predicting massive returns on some of his biggest bets. A longtime Teslabull, he has a staggering 45% of one of his largest funds invested in the electric vehicle maker’s stock, even after shares have struggled this year, down nearly 44%. While Baron’s investment in Tesla has reaped huge profits over the years, 2022 has proved more difficult amid the broader market selloff. The flagship $6 billion (assets) Baron Growth Fund is down roughly 26% in 2022, while the Baron Partners Fund, also with $6 billion under management, is down 28% (compared to the S&amp;P 500’s 21% decline). Still, the Baron Partners Fund boasts an annual average return of 28% and 22% over the last five and ten years, respectively.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="552" height="368" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Ron-Baron.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-57053" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Ron-Baron.jpeg 552w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Ron-Baron-300x200.jpeg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 552px) 100vw, 552px" /></figure></div>


FORBES: How did you get your start in investing?&nbsp;



RON BARON:&nbsp;I went to law school at night in Washington, D.C., and worked in the patent office during the daytime as a patent examiner. And I had all these other jobs—from bartender to cabana boy—to make extra money. When I was 26, I couldn’t be drafted anymore, so I resigned from the patent office and came to New York. I was $15,000 in debt, with just $500 in cash, living in my friend’s basement in New Jersey and applying for a job as an analyst on Wall Street. I couldn’t get a job—I was even applying for jobs as chauffeurs for people who worked on Wall Street. I figured, if I work for them, I can impress them, then maybe I can talk them into a job, but nothing. After around three months, I talked my way into a job working as a research analyst for Janney Montgomery Scott. I would go visit companies every week and then send out a research letter to salesmen who would pitch them to clients. After a bad stock recommendation, I got fired and started looking for a second job. I called up Alan Abelson, the editor of&nbsp;Barron’s, and told him my story. I went to talk to him, and he offered me a job as a reporter, but I said, “Thanks very much, but I’ve always wanted to be an investor.” He ended up recommending me for my next job, which was also in research. I then partnered with a friend from law school doing research that we sold to hedge funds for commissions. By that time, my net worth had gone from –$15,000 to $2 million. So in 1982, I started Baron Capital with $10 million in assets under management.



FORBES: How would you describe your investment strategy today and has it evolved over your career?&nbsp;



BARON:&nbsp;When I first got started, it was about what a business was worth. It was based on what I thought a business was worth and then buying it at a discount to that. I bought a bunch of stocks like that—most of them worked out fine, but the ones that didn’t were just terrible investments and I couldn’t get out of them. So I said, that doesn’t sound like a very good idea. What turned out to be a better idea was investing in great businesses with growth potential, great people running them and a competitive advantage. I focused on sales growth as opposed to earnings per share growth. It is always about learning how businesses make money. I thought that was a big advantage that I had from my own experience, because I saw how they worked and what made them successful or not. I also learned about Warren Buffett and how he invested, so I tried to do that. He’s more of a value investor, though, whereas I’m much more growth oriented.



FORBES: Which investment do you consider to be your greatest triumph?&nbsp;



BARON:&nbsp;It would be&nbsp;Tesla (TSLA)—that’s the one we’ve made the most from and the one I still think we’re going to make the most from in the future. One of my friends from law school and the patent office called me up about investing in Antonio Gracias’ partnership, who it turns out became friendly with Elon Musk and then became the lead director of Tesla in 2007. He eventually introduced me to Musk, who came to visit me wearing baggy cargo pants and a plaid shirt, looking generally disheveled. He tells me his story about how he’s going to create this electric car to compete against legacy automakers and oil companies. After the stock went public in 2010 at around $20 per share, I couldn’t sell it fast enough, but continued to watch it. That was around when the company introduced the Model S, which sent the stock to $80 per share. So I went out to visit Musk at his factory, where we spent several hours talking about space and cars. Shortly after, the stock doubled again, and I said to myself, “I have to own it.” So we invested $380 between 2014 and 2016, which has generated billions of dollars in gains for our clients over the years. I think we’re going to be getting a five, six or seven times return on our investment again in the next ten years. Now we’ve also been heavily investing in SpaceX.



FORBES: Which investment do you consider your biggest disappointment and what did you learn from it?&nbsp;



BARON:&nbsp;Well, the biggest dollar loss was&nbsp;Sotheby’s. I invested $500 million in 1999 thinking they could take auctions online, and the stock had initially doubled in price. But then the chairman got indicted and the stock fell to half the original price I invested at, so I sold it. We had also owned nonvoting stock, which taught me a valuable lesson about avoiding that in the future. The huge mistake I made was that I wasted my time and didn’t focus on Amazon<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AMZN</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/amazon">-1.4%</a>&nbsp;in 1999, when I would go visit Jeff Bezos to unsuccessfully persuade him to buy Sotheby’s. It taught me that whenever I meet someone like that again I will know it and not fail to invest with them. Investing in great people—that’s what happened with Musk after the second time I met him.



FORBES: If you could give your 20-year-old self advice about investing, what would it be?&nbsp;



BARON:&nbsp;You have to love what you do, really work hard and guard your reputation above everything else. By that, I mean the way you act when nobody sees what you’re doing. You have to ask yourself, would I be proud? One of the people who helped me early in my career was Jay Pritzker, who told me once, “Ron, if you need to have an agreement in writing, you’re doing business with the wrong person.” You have to live and die by your word. Whatever you say you’re going to do, you do. That was a really big lesson, living up to your word and being a handshake person.



FORBES: What is the biggest risk investors face, either from a broad strategy standpoint or from a current investment environment standpoint?



BARON:&nbsp;The biggest risk for investors right now is that they think because they’re smart, they can predict politics, the stock market or oil prices, for example. They think all they have to do is buy or sell stock to be successful, but that’s not true. When people are investing, they shouldn’t think they are going to make money on investments immediately. They should have some reasonable time frame. If they are investing today to make money tomorrow, next month, or even next year—that’s risky. In order to invest successfully you have to have a long time horizon and be prepared to invest in a business, as opposed to investing in stocks. I believe there is an expertise to investing in businesses just like there is in cutting hair or flying a plane.



FORBES: What are some books that you recommend every investor read?&nbsp;



BARON:&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3iiVHSq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk&nbsp;and the Bet of the Century&nbsp;by Tim Higgins</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3upU48l" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr.</a>&nbsp;by Ron Chernow. I’m currently reading&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3F4mfi3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leonardo da Vinci&nbsp;</a>by Walter Isaacson.



FORBES:&nbsp;Thank you.



The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletters/forbes-billionaire-investor/?utm_source=investing[%E2%80%A6]nic&amp;utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_organic_subscribe_fbi-article">Excerpted from November issue of Forbes Billionaire Investor, where you can invest alongside the world’s smartest billionaire investors.</a>



By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

Billionaires

Billionaire Investor Insights From Growth Stock Optimist Ron Baron

From financial ruin to jail time, here are the big billionaire downfalls that compete with Sam Bankman-Fried’s $17 billion FTX collapse.



The world&nbsp;watched in shock last week as the floor fell out from under Sam Bankman-Fried. Over the course of just a few days, the 30-year-old founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX went from one of the 50 richest people in America and one of crypto’s most influential figures to the poster boy of the biggest crypto collapse to date.



A skeptical report from Coindesk about the finances of FTX’s sister company, Alameda Research, kicked off the decline. The revelation that at least $5.8 billion of Alameda’s assets were tied to FTX’s native token, FTT, caused investors to frantically withdraw their funds from the exchange. Later reports from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftx-tapped-into-customer-accounts-to-fund-risky-bets-setting-up-its-downfall-11668093732?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Wall Street Journal</a>&nbsp;and others alleged that Alameda Research used as much as $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to make its bets–something that is highly illegal. Bankman-Fried essentially admitted to trading using FTX customer assets&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in an exchange with a&nbsp;Vox&nbsp;reporter</a>. Bankman-Fried’s estimated fortune went from $17 billion to less than $1 billion in days.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;figures now it might be closer to zero. Alameda Research, FTX and FTX U.S. filed for bankruptcy on Friday, November 11, and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO the same day. (SBF might have hidden away some cash from a stake&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-cashed-out-300-million-during-funding-spree-11668799774" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he reportedly sold</a>&nbsp;to investors or from $2.7 billion in loans&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/11/17/sam-bankman-fried-and-three-ftx-executives-received-41-billion-of-loans-from-alameda-research-where-did-the-money-come-from-and-where-did-it-go/?sh=b7182b879c72">he took from Alameda Research</a>.)



While the fallout from FTX’s implosion is still being uncovered, one thing is clear: Few other billionaires have fallen as far and as fast as Bankman-Fried. Among those who lost nearly their entire fortunes within the course of just a few days or weeks are investor Adolf Merckle, once one of Germany’s richest people who was wrecked by the 2008 financial crisis, and Kanye West, whose antisemitism proved his undoing.



Two superrich tycoons who never made the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;billionaires list but also had massive blowups: Bernie Madoff (d. 2021), the infamous fraudster who ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and Archegos Capital Management&#8217;s Bill Hwang, whose investment firm collapsed almost overnight last year leading to an estimated $10 billion in losses for some of the world’s biggest banks.



Over the past 20 years, other fortunes have imploded for a wide variety of reasons including fraud and deceit. Many of these blowups have led to lawsuits and even jail time. That includes Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of now-defunct blood testing firm Theranos, who was sentenced on Friday&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/11/18/elizabeth-holmes-sentenced-to-11-years-in-prison-for-fraud/?sh=42805a626d27">to more than 11 years in prison</a>&nbsp;for defrauding investors. Three others are now behind bars while one is on house arrest and another is awaiting trial.



The final page in SBF’s increasingly bizarre story has yet to be written. While the world watches to see what fate faces him and FTX, here’s a look at the biggest billionaire downfalls of recent history—and where these individuals stand today. (In descending order from most recent):



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-kanye-west-a-shoe-empire-toppled-by-antisemitism">1. Kanye West: A shoe empire toppled by antisemitism</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-peak-net-worth-2-billion-in-april-2022">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$2 billion in April 2022</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-net-worth-now-400-million">Net worth now:&nbsp;$400 million</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-date-of-blowup-october-2022">Date of blowup:&nbsp;October 2022</h4>



After Kanye West put forth a stream of antisemitic comments, conspiracy theories and other controversial behavior, the rapper and designer now known as Ye was dropped by Yeezy’s key business partner Adidas in October. That followed Ye’s termination the previous month of what was supposed to be a 10-year contract with clothing retailer Gap. Also cutting ties with Ye were French fashion house Balenciaga, retailer Foot Locker, his talent agency CAA and his banker JPMorgan. Despite the meltdown of his business empire, Ye is still worth an estimated $400 million from the value of his personal real estate, music catalog, cash and a 5% stake in Skims, the $3.2 billion shapewear brand started by his ex-wife, billionaire Kim Kardashian.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Nirav Modi: Fugitive Jeweler</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$1.8 billion in 2015</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2018</h4>



The one-time jeweler to the stars, whose high-priced baubles were adorned by the likes of Kate Winselet, Dakota Johnson and Priyanka Chopra-Jonas, is now in Wandsworth Prison in southwest London fighting his extradition to India. Earlier this month, the High Court in London ordered his extradition. The Indian-origin diamantaire, who aspired to be the next Harry Winston with stores across the globe, was accused of defrauding the state-owned Punjab National Bank of $1.8 billion to fund the expansion of his now-bankrupt firm Firestar International.



Modi fled India in 2018 shortly before the scandal broke and a year later was sighted on the streets of London sporting a handlebar moustache. He was arrested shortly thereafter. The Indian authorities have been recovering Modi&#8217;s dues by seizing and selling his assets, including his much-prized art collection. The Wharton School dropout was born into a family of diamond traders and grew up in Belgium. He moved to India to learn the family trade under his uncle and struck out on his own in 1999.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/615e13a7298aca27c9442742/Rishi-Shah-outcome-health29386/1960x0.jpg?format=jpg&amp;width=960" alt="Rishi Shah outcome_health29386" width="605" height="403"/><figcaption>JAMEL TOPPIN/THE FORBES COLLECTION</figcaption></figure></div>


<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Rishi Shah: Accused of fraud, awaiting trial</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$3.6 billion in 2017</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;$0</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2018</h4>



Rishi Shah turned heads as the young, college-dropout founder of buzzy healthcare media startup Outcome Health, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/05/30/outcome-health-new-drug-marketing-billionaire/?sh=168def4b6b0f">raised</a>&nbsp;$600 million at a $5.6 billion valuation in May 2017. Within two years of Shah entering the billionaire ranks, however, he and two top executives from Outcome were charged with fraud for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-executives-and-employees-health-technology-start-charged-1-billion-scheme-defraud" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">allegedly</a>&nbsp;stealing about $1 billion from clients, lenders and investors by misrepresenting the company’s financial performance and the success of its products. The trio all pled not guilty after they were charged in 2019, and are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagobusiness.com/john-pletz-technology/former-outcome-health-executives-trial-pushed-2023" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">set</a>&nbsp;to stand trial in 2023.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. John Kapoor: Disgraced drugmaker in prison</h2>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$3.3 billion in 2015</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2017</h4>



Pharma industry entrepreneur and investor John Kapoor was the founder, CEO and chairman of opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics. In October 2017, Kapoor was arrested and charged with conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe the company’s fentanyl spray Subsys, which was designed to ease cancer-related pain,<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2019/12/23/best-stories-of-the-decade-an-opioid-spray-showered-billionaire-john-kapoor-in-riches-now-hes-feeling-the-pain/?sh=35b7fefc6c81">&nbsp;to patients who didn’t need it</a>. Insys declared bankruptcy and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2019/10/28/ceo-of-troubled-chandler-drugmaker-departs-as.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;it was shutting down its operations in 2019. The Indian-born businessman, who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2018/12/07/fentanyl-billionaire-no-more-john-kapoors-net-worth-drops-below-1-billion/?sh=744ec33b3b90">dropped out of&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;billionaires rankings</a>&nbsp;just months after his arrest,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/01/23/former-billionaire-john-kapoor-sentenced-to-55-years-in-prison/?sh=7c827547ab1c">received a five-and-a-half year prison sentence in 2020</a>&nbsp;after a jury found him and four other Insys executives guilty of a racketeering conspiracy. He’s set to be released in August 2024, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5553a493e4b0bacdbd751488/Elizabeth-Holmes/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&amp;width=960" alt="Elizabeth Holmes" width="-167" height="-125"/><figcaption>ETHAN PINES/THE FORBES COLLECTION</figcaption></figure></div>


<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Elizabeth Holmes: One-time medical mogul sentenced to 11 years in prison</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$4.5 billion in 2015</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;$0</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2016</h4>



Theranos cofounder&nbsp;<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/elizabeth-holmes/">Elizabeth Holmes</a>&nbsp;was once the toast of the tech world for developing a device she claimed would revolutionize blood testing by using just a drop or two of blood from a person’s fingertip. In 2015, the Stanford University dropout was the richest self-made woman in America. A year later,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;lowered our estimate of her net worth to nothing, after the technology proved to be unreliable and as the company faced a slew of investigations from federal agencies. In 2018, she was indicted for wire fraud. The case went to trial in 2021. During her trial, Holmes tried to pin the blame on her ex-boyfriend and Theranos’ former president and chief operating officer, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. However, jurors didn’t buy it and convicted Holmes on four charges of defrauding investors in January 2022. Pregnant with her second child, she was sentenced to more than 11 years behind bars in November 2022. Balwani was found guilty, too, and faces up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">6. Eike Batista: Once Brazil’s richest sentenced to 30 years</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$30 billion in 2012</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2013</h4>



A man with outsized ambition, Brazilian oil and gas entrepreneur Eike Batista once pledged to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;he would become the world’s richest person (a title that has since gone to Tesla CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=23fcc52d7999">Elon Musk</a>). For a while, it seemed possible. In early 2012, Batista was worth an estimated $30 billion as the prices of his publicly traded energy companies, housed under the parent company EBX Group, soared. But within a year, amid failures to meet production and financial targets, his energy empire began to crumble. It became clear that his flagship oil company OGX had vastly overstated its oil reserves. OGX filed for bankruptcy in 2013 after defaulting on a $45 billion bond payment, marking the largest corporate default in Latin American history. Batista was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2018 for bribing the now-imprisoned former Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergei Cabral $16.5 million in exchange for state contracts. He is reportedly living in his mansion under house arrest.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">7. Vijay Mallya: Good times gone bad</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$1.6 billion in 2007</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2012</h4>



Known as “the King of Good Times” for his flamboyant lifestyle, Mallya ran United Spirits, one of India’s largest liquor companies, and the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines. After entering the aviation space in 2005, the liquor mogul racked up debts of more than $1 billion owed to numerous Indian banks as he sought to keep his struggling Kingfisher Airlines afloat. At one point the second largest domestic carrier in India, Kingfisher became insolvent and shut down in 2012; pilots and cabin staff were unpaid for months on end while Mallya continued to throw extravagant parties,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarmali/2016/03/09/vijay-mallya-goes-down-partying/?sh=2da5c5135dce">reported</a>&nbsp;at the time. Mallya fled to the U.K. in 2016 after defaulting on debts to lenders by State Bank of India and is believed to still be living there today; he is the subject of an extradition effort. Mallya was declared bankrupt by a British court last July, paving the way for Indian banks to seek repayments of Mallya’s outstanding debts.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">8. Allen Stanford: The Ponzi prince</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$2.2 billion in 2008</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;$0</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2009</h4>



A fraudster who gave Bernie Madoff a run for his money, Stanford was convicted in 2012 for running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme through his Stanford Financial Group. The former billionaire<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/03/06/allen-stanford-convicted-in-7-billion-ponzi-scheme/?sh=463dbcf75388">&nbsp;made a killing</a>&nbsp;for about two decades by selling fraudulent high-yielding certificates of deposit through his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank and then using the funds for dubious investments and to fund his lavish lifestyle, according to prosecutors. In 2012, he was sentenced to 110 years in prison, which he is currently serving in a high-security prison in Coleman, Florida. The victims of Stanford’s scheme have had their money returned at a slower rate than Madoff’s victims. Just over $1 billion has been recovered to date. In January 2022, a Texas judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/4B-Stanford-fraud-case-against-banks-to-go-to-16792363.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ruled</a>&nbsp;that five banks sued for $4 billion by a group of Stanford investors for allegedly facilitating the fraudster by providing him financial services would have to stand trial. The banks have denied the claims and unsuccessfully tried to dismiss the lawsuit.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">9. Adolf Merckle: A financial crisis casualty</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$12.8 billion in 2007</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2008</h4>



Merckle was a German industrialist whose investment outfit got hit badly in the financial crisis of 2008. Making matters much worse was a big bet he made against Volkswagen AG, which backfired in October that year when it was revealed European car giant Porsche was vying to take over the company, sending Volkswagen’s share price soaring. Merckle sought more than $1 billion in bridge loans to cover the losses incurred by his VEM Vermoegensverwaltung conglomerate, which by that point was heavily leveraged. As his empire teetered toward collapse, Merckle took his own life by stepping in front of a train near his home in Blaubeuren, Germany in 2009. After Adolf’s death, his son Ludwig turned around the tumbling family fortune, selling off pieces but eventually recovering. He is now worth more than $5 billion.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">10. Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Putin-induced collapse of Russia’s richest man.</h3>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Peak net worth:&nbsp;$15 billion in 2004</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Est net worth now:&nbsp;N/A</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Date of blowup:&nbsp;2006</h4>



The former head of Russian oil and gas giant Yukos, Khodorkovsky was once Russia’s richest man, worth an estimated $15 billion at the height of his wealth in 2004. But after a public sparring with Putin over government corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested and jailed for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud, allegations he has denied and blasted as politically motivated. Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil company, was broken apart and declared bankrupt in 2006; most of its assets were absorbed by the state-controlled oil company Rosneft.&nbsp;Khodorkovsky was pardoned in 2013 and has since relocated to London, where he remains a vocal critic of Putin. “The world will not be a safe place as long as Putin remains in power,” the former billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2022/05/03/exiled-former-russian-oligarch-mikhail-khodorkovsky-the-world-will-not-be-a-safe-place-as-long-as-putin-remains-in-power/?sh=391c8cec136b">said</a>&nbsp;in May at the Milken Institute’s annual conference.



This story was updated on November 20 to include Nirav Modi’s blowup in place of Anil Ambani’s.

Key Speakers At The Bloomberg Crypto Summit

Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes And 9 Other Epic Billionaire Blowups

Wall Street billionaires Carl Icahn, Ken Griffin, Israel Englander and Daniel Loeb can thank Elon Musk for what might be 2022’s easiest money trade.



For many hedge funds,&nbsp;Elon Musk’s $44 billion “forced” purchase of Twitter represented an easy money trade.



“You didn’t have to be a genius to realize that he was going to finish that deal,” said Carl Icahn at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2022/11/03/carl-icahn-would-have-waged-a-proxy-fight-for-twitter-if-musk-deal-fell-through/?sh=684d42f74623">Forbes Iconoclast Summit</a>&nbsp;on November 3, adding that he would have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2022/11/03/carl-icahn-would-have-waged-a-proxy-fight-for-twitter-if-musk-deal-fell-through/?sh=5928e07d4623">considered waging a proxy fight</a>&nbsp;if the deal fell through.



Icahn told the audience at New York’s Historical Society that he made a profit of around $250 million by investing in Twitter this summer. But he was far from the only one to benefit. Regulatory filings show that billionaire-led hedge funds including Citadel Advisors, Millennium Management, D.E. Shaw and Third Point built large positions in Twitter in the second and third quarters, as well as other firms like Pentwater Capital and Farallon Capital.



Musk signed a merger agreement to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share in April, but the stock was trading as low as $32.65 by July when he tried to terminate the deal. That created an arbitrage opportunity for as much as a 66% return for investors who doubted Musk had much of a chance in the Delaware Court of Chancery to back out.



Icahn’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/921669/000153949722001801/xslForm13F_X01/infotable.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">third-quarter 13-F filing</a>&nbsp;with the SEC shows that he owned 12.5 million Twitter shares as of September 30. He said at the&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;summit he bought in the mid-$30s–if he bought at an average price of $35 per share and made a $19.20 profit on each one when the deal closed at the original price of $54.20 per share on October 28, he would have netted a $240 million profit.



The only fund that made a bigger bet than Icahn was Naples, Florida-based Pentwater Capital Management, founded by Matthew Halbower in 2007. It bought 18.1 million shares during the second quarter and added another 5.3 million shares as of the end of the third quarter. If it bought those 24 million shares at Twitter stock’s median closing price of $40.16 in the first quarter and $41.05 in the second quarter and held them through the completion of the acquisition in October, it would have made $324 million in profit, though its 13-F filing shows it hedged some of those gains by buying put options as well. Pentwater didn’t respond to a request for comment.



In all,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;found 13 hedge funds that spent upwards of $100 million adding to their Twitter stakes between the end of the first quarter and the end of the third quarter this year. We reached out to each fund to ask for average purchase prices, and estimated that they bought at Twitter’s median closing price in each quarter if more precise information wasn’t available. These funds cumulatively purchased more than 10% of the company in the six months leading up to September 30 and likely made well over $1 billion in profits on the deal.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-twitter-winners">TWITTER WINNERS</h4>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-these-hedge-funds-added-the-most-to-their-twitter-positions-this-spring-and-summer-and-likely-minted-profits-if-they-held-on-through-elon-musk-s-purchase">These hedge funds added the most to their Twitter positions this spring and summer and likely minted profits if they held on through Elon Musk&#8217;s purchase.</h4>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="800" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot-2022-11-21-at-15.52.49-1024x800.png" alt="" class="wp-image-56886" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot-2022-11-21-at-15.52.49-1024x800.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot-2022-11-21-at-15.52.49-300x234.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot-2022-11-21-at-15.52.49-768x600.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot-2022-11-21-at-15.52.49.png 1480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Source: SEC 13-F Filings</figcaption></figure>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



These numbers don’t include any additional shares the firms may have purchased in October, when the margins were slimmer while Musk finalized the acquisition, and don’t include possible trading that took place within each quarter. 13-F filings show a simple snapshot of each firm’s long stock holdings on the last day of each quarter and don’t provide enough information to pin down exact gains and losses, but often represent the most thorough picture of what funds are buying and selling.



The biggest winners included Hong Kong-based Segantii Capital Management, founded by British investor Simon Sadler, and Farallon Capital, the San Francisco-based firm founded by Thomas Steyer in 1986 and now run by Andrew Spokes.



David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital initiated a position of 4.3 million shares in the third quarter, his 13-F filing shows, and he wrote in a letter to investors viewed by&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that the average purchase price was $37.24 per share. He expected that the Delaware Court of Chancery would be wary of inviting future buyer’s remorse suits if it let Musk walk away.



“The case law on this is quite clear. If it were anyone other than Musk, we would handicap the odds of the buyer wiggling out of the deal to be much less than 5%,” Einhorn wrote in the letter prior to the completion of the deal. “At this price there is $17 per share of upside if TWTR prevails in court and we believe about $17 per share of downside, if the deal breaks. So, we are getting 50-50 odds on something that should happen 95%+ of the time.”



Musk saw the writing on the wall and reversed course in October, agreeing to pay the full price as these investors expected. His first weeks as Twitter’s owner have been marked by confusion and complaints after he opened verification to anyone willing to pay $8 per month, causing a wave of “verified” parody accounts, and laid off 3,700 employees, almost half of its staff. He has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/11/10/musk-tells-staff-twitter-could-go-bankrupt-without-financial-turnaround-reports-say/?sh=5cc89ccc7257">warned Twitter’s staff</a>&nbsp;that “bankruptcy is not out of the question,” but if his $44 billion equity investment goes up in smoke, the hedge funds he paid that cash to will be laughing all the way to the bank.



By Hank Tucker, Forbes Staff

Category: Billionaires

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