Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk overtook Amazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos on Thursday as the richest person in the world. A jump in Tesla’s stock price has raised the value of its paper wealth to more than $ 188 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Tesla’s shares rose more than 7% on Thursday, helping to push Musk’s net worth to $ 1.5 billion above Bezos’s fortune, according to Bloomberg, citing data monitored by its wealth index. Electric car maker shares had a spectacular run last year, rising almost 800%, from about $ 92 a year ago to more than $ 811 in Thursday’s trading.
Responding on Twitter to an account that said he was now the richest person in the world, Musk replied, “How strange.” He later added, “Well, back to work …”
Tesla shares were added to the S&P 500 last month. The company’s value of $ 768 billion is greater than that of Ford, GM, Volkswagen and Toyota combined.
Musk’s rise to the top of the rich list comes at a time when the country’s billionaires saw their fortunes rise by more than $ 1 trillion during the pandemic, thanks in part to a strong stock market fueled by investors’ expectations of an economic recovery in 2021. Companies like Amazon saw sales and profits soar as consumers changed their spending patterns and changed their behavior to adjust to the coronavirus pandemic.
To be sure, the change in rating may not last due to the variable nature of high-profile stocks, such as Amazon and Tesla. And Bezos would probably remain the richest person in the world without his divorce in 2019, which gave his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott about 25% of its holdings on Amazon.
Scott, for his part, is the 23rd richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $ 56 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Last month, Scott said he donated more than $ 4.2 billion of his fortune to charities, including anti-hunger groups and educational institutions.
Amazon’s stock has also not declined. Since last January, its shares have risen more than 66%.