Musk has lost a huge chunk of his fortune even as he and his backers pitch trillion-dollar futures for SpaceX and Starlink — bearish on his wealth now, wildly bullish on the long-term story.

• Musk's net worth has fallen by more than $500 billion in under two months, down to around $800 billion, with traders betting it drops further this year.
• Musk keeps saying money and jobs won't matter once cheap robots and AI provide more goods than people can use — a vision critics see as replacing human workers.
• Federal cuts already slashed nearly 400,000 government jobs, including in rural states, fitting the "robots over workers" theme.
• SpaceX stock is down 40-50% from its peak, yet Musk and allies project revenue jumping from $18 billion last year to $1 trillion by 2030.
• Starlink is the cash engine, with backers claiming it could carry most of the world's internet traffic and be worth multiple trillions.

Outlook: Expect Musk's paper wealth to stay volatile while the sky-high SpaceX and Starlink targets remain unproven bets on robots, AI, and space data centers.