Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is now the richest man in the world as his current net worth of over $185 billion has just exceeded Jeff Bezos’ $184 billion.
Bezos, who’s been the richest person since 2017, has succumbed to Musk’s rapid wealth surge over the past year. That rise is the fastest one to the top in history, and it makes for a substantial turnaround for Musk, who, less than two years ago, was making headlines for Tesla’s rapid cash burn.
Read More: Tesla Came Oh So Close To Delivering 500,000 Vehicles In 2020
Musk passed Warren Buffett in July to become the seventh-richest person, and Bill Gates in November to become the world’s second-richest person. As wild as it sounds, Musk has amassed more wealth in the past year than Bill Gates’ entire $132 billion net worth.
Aside from his exploits at Tesla, Musk is also the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX, founder of The Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink, and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI.
He started 2020 with a worth of “only” about $27 billion, which is by no means bad, but meant he was barely in the top 50 of the world’s richest people. However, thanks to Tesla’s share price increasing more than nine-fold over the past year, he was able to add more than $150 billion to his net worth and is now the richest person on the planet.
Watch: Elon Musk Wanted Apple To Buy Tesla At $60 Billion Valuation, Tim Cook Wouldn’t Even Take Meeting
Yesterday morning, Musk pinned an older tweet of his to the top of his Twitter feed, likely to share with the public his thoughts on spending his wealth. The tweet reads “About half my money is intended 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 and we destroy ourselves.”
Pretty lofty aspirations indeed. Will he go through with them? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
