CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Elon Musk became the world’s richest person, after Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s share price pushed Musk past Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, to grab the title.
A 6% rise in Tesla shares has lifted the value of its CEO’s stock holdings and options by $10 billion, taking his net worth to about $191 billion.
On the other hand, a more modest rise of less than 2% lifted Bezos’ Amazon (AMZN) shares by about $3 billion, putting his net worth at $187 billion.
With that, Musk takes the top spot from Bezos, owner of Blue Origin LLC, who had held the title since 2017.
He reacted to the news in signature style, replying to his Twitter account sharing the news with the remark “how strange” and “Well, back to work..”
His electric car company has surged in value this year, hitting a market value of $700bn (£516bn) for the first time on Wednesday, which makes it worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM and Ford combined.
Bezos could have still held a wide lead over Tesla’s CEO, if he was not divorced, as his divorce saw him cede about a quarter of his Amazon stake to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, in addition to his philanthropy, as he donated shares worth about $680 million in November.
Bill Gates is now a distant third at $132 billion, according to Bloomberg.
