His net worth has soared by $55.3bn (£44.44bn) since January to $192bn (£153.24bn), after a rise in the value of his electric car company Tesla.

Mr Arnault’s fortune has fallen by $24.5bn (£19.55bn) to $187bn (£149bn), per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

He is followed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in the third and fourth positions.

Mr Arnault, 74, had overtaken Mr Musk, 51, on the rich list in December when shares in LMVH jumped as demand for luxury goods rebounded.

At the same, shares in Tesla – the company from which Mr Musk derives most of his wealth – fell sharply amid concerns that his takeover of the social media platform Twitter was affecting his leadership.

However, Tesla shares have bounced back by almost 92% since the start of this year as investor nerves have eased and Mr Musk has announced his replacement as Twitter’s chief executive.

His visit to China this week to discuss Tesla has also sparked excitement, while the car firm is benefiting from the recent rise in interest in artificial intelligence.

By contrast, LMVH – which owns brands including Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior – has gone into reverse.

After hitting a record high in April, its shares have fallen sharply and are down 16% since the start of the year.

Mr Arnault, who co-founded the luxury goods giant in 1987, owns a majority stake in the business, which is Europe’s most valuable firm.

In January the Frenchman appointed his daughter Delphine Arnault, 47, as head of his fashion house Dior as part of a shake-up at LMVH.

All five of Mr Arnault’s children hold management positions at brands in the group.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world’s third richest person with a fortune of $37.3bn. Mr Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, is worth $16.2bn.

Speaking in an interview with TED which aired on Monday, Mr Musk said he did not currently have a home and was staying with friends around San Francisco’s Bay Area, near Tesla HQ, when working in the city.

“I don’t even own a place right now, I’m literally staying at friends’ places,” said the 50-year-old, who usually lives in Texas. “If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms”.

The Tesla and Space X founder added that he does not own a yacht and did not take holidays in a defence of his billion-dollar wealth.

“I dont have yacht, I don’t take vacations, so its not as that my personal consumption is high,” Mr Musk said, adding: “One exception is a plane but if I dont use the plane I have less hours to work.”

He had been asked by TED’s Chris Anderson, the head of the conference organization, about people who were “hugely offended” by billionaires before making the claims about his living situation.

“I think there’s some axiomatic flaws that are leading to that conclusion,” said Mr Musk of the people who are “offended” by his wealth. “If, for sure it would be problematic if I was consuming billions of dollars of year in personal consumption but that is not the case”.

Mr Musk has a an estimated net worth of $251bn (£207bn), according to Bloomberg, and is the richest individual in the United States and the world. He is currently at the centre of a $43bn (£33bn )take over bid of Twitter but has been set back by the company’s board.

The TED comments come a month after Mr Musk’s long-term on-and-off partner Grimes caused controversy with an interview with Vanity Fair in March in which she said he “does not live like a billionaire”.

“Bro lives at times below the poverty line. To the point where I was like, can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there’s no security, and I’m eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?”

Grimes, who recently gave birth to the couple’s second child, was heavily condemned for suggesting Mr Musk’s frugal lifestyle was equivalent to being “poor”.