Elon Musk is the World’s Richest Person

The Space X and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranked list of the World’s 500 wealthiest individuals. Musk holds 170 million shares in Tesla which started with a 4.8% spike exceeding Amazon’s share price, increasing to a 7% rise in shares, which continues to climb. This increased Musk’s net worth by more than $10 billion pushing it to over $188.5 billion. Within a year Musk’s net worth soared by $150 billion, widely deemed as the fasted accumulation of wealth in history.

Bezos is now ranked at second place at $184 billion having previously held the title since October 2017. It is suspected that the Democratic win in the United States Senate caused the surge in Tesla shares, given the party’s stronger focus on an environmentally friendly agenda such as the Green New Deal, and their goal of quicker adoption of electric vehicles.

The South African-born billionaire reacted to the news by tweeting “how strange”, followed by “well, back to work”. The increased share of Tesla puts pressure on Musk to prove within the next few years that the electric car company is profitable enough to justify its inflated valuation.

In 2020, the world’s richest 500 individuals managed to accumulate a record $1.8 trillion to their combined wealth, equivalent to an increase of 31%, whilst, during the same period, the coronavirus pandemic cost the global economy nearly $1 trillion dollars.