Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk replaced Jeff Bezos as the world's richest person, worth $185bn
The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur was pushed into the top slot after Tesla's share price hits $8000 on Thursday. He now takes the top spot from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who had held it since 2017.
Mr Musk's electric car company Tesla has surged in value this year and hit a market value of $700bn (£516bn) for the first time on Wednesday.
That makes the car company worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM and Ford combined. Mr Musk reacted to the news in signature style, replying to a Twitter user sharing the news with the remark "how strange". Then he said “back to work”.
The South Africa-born engineer’s net worth was $188.5 billion at 10:15 a.m. in New York, $1.5 billion more than Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017. As chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin LLC, in the private space race.
The milestone caps an extraordinary 12 months for Musk. Over the past year, his net worth soared by more than $150 billion in possibly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history. Fueling his rise was an unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share price, which surged 743% last year on the back of consistent profits, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and enthusiasm from Wall Street and retail investors alike.
Bezos would still hold a wide lead over Musk had it not been for his divorce, which saw him cede about a quarter of his Amazon stake to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, and his philanthropy. He donated shares worth about $680 million in November.
