Elon Musk, the brain behind the emission free, electric car company Tesla Inc, has become the world’s second richest man. He is now just one rank away from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest person.
The 49-year-old billionaire’s net worth rose to $127.9 billion, thanks to a surge in the share price of Tesla Inc. The Tesla Inc and SpaceX founder has surpassed Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates on Monday.
In November last year, Bill Gates had reclaimed ‘the richest person on earth’ title after his net worth rose to $110 billion. However, he had donated extensively to his philanthropic causes. It is said that he pledged $27 billion to Bill Gates Foundation since 2006.
In January 2020, Elon Musk was at 35th spot among the 500 wealthiest people in the world. Then, thanks to Tesla Inc, he rose on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At present, the market value of Tesla Inc stands at $491 billion.
According to Bloomberg, Musk added $100.3 billion to his net worth in 2020. On the other hand, Bezos sits on an empire worth $182 billion in net worth.
It is known that Bill Gates held his spot for years on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, it was in 2017, that Jezz Bezos stole his spot when his net worth reached $90.6 billion.
Back to Tesla, the company’s market shares rose to 6 per cent on Monday, nearing a $500 billion market value. What is surprising is that despite having a fraction of production when compared to auto giants like Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, Tesla Inc managed to go up by 500 per cent.
Right now, Tesla Inc is the seventh most valuable company in Wall Street.