Move over Bill Gates. Elon Musk has now toppled Bill Gates as the second richest person in the world, just a week after the Tesla co-founder overt
Driven by a further surge in Tesla’s stock price, the 49-year-old entrepreneur’s net worth increased by $ 7.2 billion to $ 127.9 billion. It has skyrocketed over $ 100 billion this year – outclassing everyone on the Bllomberg Billionaires Index which lists the 500 richest people in the world. In January, Musk was in 35th place.
The maverick CEO of the electric car company is now ranked immediately behind Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
Tesla shares have surged since the company was selected to join the S&P 500 Index of major U.S. companies a week ago, bringing its market value to nearly $ 500 billion. Three-quarters of Musk’s net worth comes from Tesla shares. Tesla has the highest market value of any automaker in the world, even though it makes far fewer vehicles than others. It is expected to deliver up to 500,000 electric vehicles this year, compared to an annual output of around 10 million from Japanese automaker Toyota.
Musk is also involved in spacecraft through his company SpaceX, which last week sent four astronauts to the International Space Station on its Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule under a commercial contract with NASA. SpaceX is set to launch 60 high-speed internet satellites into orbit, after suffering delays due to bad weather conditions.
Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, was the richest person in the world for years before being knocked out of the top spot by Bezos in 2017. Gates’ fortune is worth $ 127.7 billion but is said to be higher if he hadn’t given large sums to charity over the years. He has donated more than $ 50 billion to help fight disease and fight poverty, mainly through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has also supported the development of Covid-19 vaccines.
Despite the pandemic, which has resulted in business closings and job losses, this has been a good year for those on the Bloomberg Index, who have collectively earned $ 1.3 billion since January.
Meanwhile 36 year old Mark Zuckerberg has fallen back to fourth place this week, behind French businessman Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury company.
