Elon Musk dethrones Jeff Bezos, becomes world’s richest

Elon Musk, the maverick boss of Tesla, has overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, after shares in the electric car company he co-founded soared . With a total net worth of $188 billion and rising, Musk has now overtaken Amazon’s CEO of Jeff Bezos, to become the wealthiest person in the world, according to the valuation by Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index- a list of the top richest people in the world.

Musk responded to the news of his status with a tweet saying “how strange” and “well, back to work…”

Musk said 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 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 that the South African-born billionaire pinned to the top of his timeline, Musk said the reason why he wants lots of money was “not what you think”. He said he had “very little time for recreation” and doesn’t have “vacation homes or yachts or anything like that”.

The primary reason behind Elon Musk’s staggering growth in wealth is the rise in Tesla’s shares which recently rallied 4.8 per cent to boost Musk’s valuation beyond that of Bezos Bezos’, net worth. As mentioned above, this surge has been one of the many that Tesla has seen this year, boosting Musk’s overall net worth during the past 12 months by over $150 billion.

Tesla is really turning into a cash cow for Musk who has gained from the electric car maker’s rise immensely. Musk currently holds 20 per cent stake in Tesla and over that also owns about $40 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options.