Elon Musk has become the world's richest person, with a net worth of over $185 billion. The Tesla and SpaceX founder made it past Jeff Bezos who has been the world richest person since 2017, after overtaking Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates.
Tesla saw a 6% increase in its share price early Thursday, lifting 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, Bezos saw an increase of less than 2% in Amazon shares by about $3 billion, bringing his net worth from $184 billion to about $187 billion.
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Tesla's shares has surged in value this year, hitting a market value of $700 billion on Wednesday for the first time on Wednesday, making the car company more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM and Ford combined.
Elon Musk began 2020 with a net worth of $27 billion, and was barely in the top 50 richest people in the world. Musk's wealth surge over the past year makes him the fastest to achieve such in history, even though the Tesla CEO 18 months ago was in the news for causing about $40 billion of loss to Tesla's stock.
Bezos also saw his stake in Amazon increased by $75 billion in 2020, making it $173.3 billion, as a result of stronger demand for both its online store and cloud computing services due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, Bezos gave his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott a 4% stake in his company during their split, which helped Musk to overtake him. Bezos also sold off or has given away shares as part of his charitable donations, while Musk has never disposed any of Tesla shares.
Also, Amazon's share price has remained more subdued due to concerns that Democratic control of the Senate could mean greater scrutiny and regulation on the industry.
Musk raced passed Bill Gates to become the second-richest person in the world, and now Jeff Bezos. The tech entrepreneur has gained more wealth over the past 12 months than Bill Gates' entire net work of $132 billion.
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