Elon Musk overtakes Amazon's Jeff Bezos to become world's richest person

Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, according to Bloomberg. A 6% rise in Tesla shares on January 7 lifted the value of Musk’s stock holdings and options by $10 billion, taking his net worth to about $191 billion. A more modest rise of less than 2 per cent lifted Bezos’ Amazon shares by about $3 billion, putting his net worth at approximately $187 billion. 

While taking to Twitter, Musk responded to the news of his status as the world’s richest person. He also said that he intended to use half of his fortune to “help problems on Earth” and “half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure the continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor-like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves”. In a series of tweets pinned to the top of his Twitter timeline, the 49-year-old also explained the reason why he wants lots of money. 

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Tesla’s shares surged by 743%

According to Bloomberg, Bill Gates is now a distant third at $132 billion. Musk, earlier this year, had overtaken Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world’s second-richest person after a sizeable increase of $100 billion with raid ascend of Tesla’s share prices and his space agency SpaceX’s success. Bezos’ net worth, on the other hand, surpasses the GDP of Hungary and Ukraine. However, with  Tesla’s soaring stock prices, the South African-born entrepreneur Musk gained a personal wealth of $190 billion, overtaking the place of the centibillionaire Bezos. 

Musk’s wealth in 2019 jumped a decent share of $150 billion due to the unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share cost that surged by an estimated 743 per cent towards the final year as per the S&P 500 Index. Just last month, Tesla’s manufacturing boosted the constant earnings for the firm, leaving behind Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co-leading to about $40 billion on paper gain for SpaceX CEO. Meanwhile, according to Forbes and Bloomberg billionaires list, Jeff Bezos’ net worth increased by $5.3 billion last year in August as Amazon's stock price surged by nearly 3 per cent despite pandemic. Bezos' wealth had surged by $80 billion as he overtook Facebook CEO and Forbes’ then third-richest person Mark Zuckerburg. 

(Image: AP)

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