Elon Musk Is Now the Richest Person in the World
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world, just months after passing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Thursday showed Musk worth $195 billion, Bezos at $185 billion and Gates in third place at $134 billion.
The index estimated Musk’s net worth at about $181 billion on Wednesday before a nearly 8 percent stock rally Thursday by Tesla, outpacing Amazon’s gains that day.
Musk, 49, responded to the news on Twitter by saying, “How strange.”
How strange
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
In a follow-up tweet, he wrote, “Well, back to work …”
Tesla’s stock, which accounts for a majority of Musk’s net worth, has continued to surge in 2021 after helping the company rise in value by over 700 percent last year, Fox News reported.
Musk’s wealth grew last year by $100.3 billion. He was ranked 35th on Bloomberg’s index in January 2020.
Tesla shares surged by almost 28 percent in the days after the news that Tesla will be admitted to the S&P 500 index on Dec. 21.
“The carmaker’s entry to the S&P 500 means a slew of big investment funds that duplicate the index’s holdings may be forced to buy an estimated $40 billion worth of Tesla shares to avoid errors tracking the index’s performance,” the New York Post reported.
Tesla is the most valuable carmaker in the world, passing Toyota in July 2020.
Musk also is successful outside of this planet after he successfully launched two NASA astronauts into space with SpaceX in May.
They made it. After launching from @NASAKennedy on the @SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft yesterday, @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug have officially joined the @Space_Station crew today at 1:02pm ET — making history in the process. pic.twitter.com/A7oExw0SlD
— NASA (@NASA) May 31, 2020
The astronauts returned to Earth two months later in a landmark achievement for the company, which is valued at about $49 billion, according to Fox News.
SpaceX ultimately aims to fly humans to Mars during this new era of space travel.
Musk surpassed Gates on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in November, and his portfolio grew over the past year by more than Gates’ current net worth of $134 billion.
Bezos’ Amazon has grown into the third-largest publicly traded company in the world, currently measured at $1.6 trillion by market capitalization.
He also owns The Washington Post.
The Bloomberg index is a daily ranking of the world’s richest people and is updated at the close of every trading day.
CORRECTION, Jan. 11, 2020: This article previously gave an incorrect figure for Amazon’s market capitalization. The company’s market cap is $1.6 trillion.
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