Elon Musk has become the richest person on the planet, surpassing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, thanks to the continued rise in Tesla’s share price. According to Musk, Musk is now worth about $ 188 billion Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“How strange,” Musk tweeted Thursday. “Well, back to work …”
Muskie, which embezzles Bezos’ own extravagant personal wealth of about $ 187 billion, is the latest development in a years-long rivalry between the two technology magnates – one that often focuses on the achievements of their respective businesses.
Bezos was reportedly so envious of Musk’s success in acquiring a $ 1.3 billion incentive package for Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada that it was the source of Amazon’s beauty pageant search for its second headquarters. Bezos has a space business in Blue Origin, just like Musk does with SpaceX. The two men traded heels about their rockets and even fighting over sanctified NASA real estate. (SpaceX won the battle and is the only one of the two companies to successfully reach the orbit.)
Musk just passed Bill Gates in November to become the second richest person in the world. The Tesla CEO has seen his personal wealth skyrocket to more than $ 150 billion by 2020, mainly because Musk has a very of Tesla share – about 20 percent of the company. And Tesla’s inventory has become incredibly valuable over the past year or so, as Musk has taken the business out of the so-called ‘production hell’ and dramatically increased sales of its electric vehicles, thanks to the cheaper Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV. This coincided with an incredible increase in retail investors who were more willing to buy the Tesla story in full than had happened in Wall Street earlier.
The billionaire CEO’s shareholding continues to grow, especially after signing a major ten-year compensation package with the company in 2018 that further linked his earnings to Tesla’s share price and revenue targets. Each time a new milestone is reached, he is awarded a range of company options; the first part he received earlier this year was worth about $ 800 million.
Like most billionaires, Musk only saw his overall prosperity increase during the coronavirus pandemic. But unlike the peer group, Musk claimed in court that he was’ cash-poor ‘and’ financially illiquid ‘in 2019 and said last year that he’almost all physical possessions, ”Including his mansions. He takes out loans on the stock that make him so rich and plows that money back into his companies, like when he poured about $ 100 million into The Boring Company in 2018. Musk has a long history of his own personal wealth to fund new endeavors, also because he funded Tesla and SpaceX after becoming a millionaire running Zip2 and PayPal.
Musk may now be the richest man on earth according to the standards of money-oriented outlets such as Bloomberg and Forbesalthough they tend to concentrate the calculation of knowable assets. However, authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman are both extremely personally wealthy in ways that are more difficult to calculate and also have undeniable access to the great wealth of their countries.