With a net worth of more than $188 billion, the Tesla and SpaceX founder completes his meteoric rise to the top of the world’s wealthiest.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla Inc and SpaceX, has become the richest person on the planet following a new surge in Tesla’s share price.
With Bloomberg estimating his net worth at $188.5 billion, Musk edged past Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos – who has held the title of world’s richest person since October 2017 – by $1.5 billion.
Musk’s net worth has seen a staggering increase since the beginning of 2020 in what may be the largest spree of wealth accumulation in modern history, rising by over $150 billion. The bulk of this has been attributed to a rally in Tesla shares, which have risen by almost 830% since last March to cement the company as the most highly valued automaker in the world.
A 5% rise in these shares on Thursday finally pushed Musk over the line to become the wealthiest man in the world. With a market value of over $700 billion, Tesla is now worth more than Volkswagen, GM, Ford, Toyota and Hyundai combined.
In addition to his 20% stake in Tesla, the milestones Musk reached in market capitalisation and profitability at the company netted him several billion dollars in stock options; Bloomberg estimates that he is currently sitting on around $42 billion of unrealised paper gains.
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Over the course of the last year, Musk’s net worth ballooned past a slew of renowned billionaires including Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates before finally surpassing Bezos – though he has yet to match the Amazon CEO’s record of achieving a net worth of $200 billion.
“How strange,” Musk wrote in a tweet in response to the news. “Well, back to work …”
