Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla has now surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who had been on the top since 2017, to become the richest man in the world, with a net worth of about 191 Billion Dollars. The huge rise of Tesla in the market during the last year has given Musk the boost to reach the top.
Bezos has also seen a rise in this wealth in the last year, due to people being heavily dependant on online shopping because of the pandemic. However, he gave a 4% stake in the business to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott after their divorce in 2019, which helped Musk overtake him. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of launching humans into space, a goal that was realized last year with the historic Demo-2 mission.
Becoming the richest man
A 4.8% rally in Tesla’s share price on Thursday increased his stock value by $10 billion and gave him the boost that led to him replacing Bezos from the top. Musk’s electric car company ‘Tesla’ has surged in value this year, and hit a market value of $700billion (£516bn) for the first time on Wednesday. In the past 12 months only, he has made a fortune of over $150 billion, which has to be the fastest wealth creation in history.
That makes the car company worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM, and Ford combined.
How strange
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
How Tesla helped him rise
Tesla’s rise in the market has benefitted Musk in more than one way. In addition to his 20% stake at the company, he also has unrealized paper gains of about $42 billion.
Despite his wealth, Musk has talked about how he has little interest in material things and wants to use his wealth for other purposes. “I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars,” said Musk, “That means just a lot of capital.”
You should ask why I would want money. The reason is not what you think. Very little time for recreation. Don’t have vacation homes or yachts or anything like that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2018
Productions in 2020
Tesla delivered 4,42,511 Model 3 and Model Y cars this year while producing 4,54,932 of the vehicles. It also delivered 57,039 Model S and Model X cars while producing 54,805 such vehicles.
“In 2020, we produced and delivered half a million vehicles, in line with our most recent guidance. In addition, Model Y production in Shanghai has begun, with deliveries expected to begin shortly,” the company said in a statement last week.
So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone! At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all. https://t.co/xCqTL5TGlE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2021
Musk has announced that he wants to increase Tesla’s vehicle sales volume from about 5,00,000 in 2020 to 20 million annually over the next decade.
In a pinned tweet on his profile, Musk said that his money was “intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure the continuation of life.”
About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2018
Musk also co-founded and sold Internet payments company PayPal Holdings Inc, and now leads some of the most futuristic companies in the world. Besides Tesla, he heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high implantable brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers. Now Jeff Bezos is second to the richest man in the world with a net worth of $187 billion, with Bill Gates following at the 3rd place with a net worth of $132 billion.
Also Read About: Kim Kardashian Divorcing Kanye West: Full Story
