Elon Musk Now Richest Man In The World

Elon Musk’s position in the world’s richest man rankings has changed this week, thanks to the soaring share price of Tesla.

Tesla share price rose 7.9 percent this week, now valuing the electric car maker at a staggering $774 billion.

To put that into context, rival car makers such as Toyota, is only valued at $211 billion, and Volkswagen is valued at a mere $104 billion as of Friday 8 January 2021.

Musk fortune

This rise in Tesla’s share price has meant that Musk’s personal fortune pushed past that of Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.

Musk is now worth $194.8 billion, or $9.5 billion more than Jeff Bezos, it is reported.

Only a couple of months ago, Musk had overtaken both Mark Zuckerberg, and then Microsoft’s Bill Gates, to become the second richest man in the world.

This is all being driven by Tesla’s share price, which has surged 743 percent in 2020 on the back of stable profits, as well as the car maker’s inclusion in the S&P 500 Index.

Indeed Tesla’s share price has risen more than 23,900 percent since its 2010 initial public offering, including a 5-for-1 stock split last year.

Back to work

Musk had a muted reaction to the news of his new found wealth status, when he replied to a tweet that told of his new status

“How strange. Well, back to work…” Musk tweeted.

Musk has a 20 percent stake in Tesla, and about $42bn of unrealised paper gains on vested stock options.

Last month Musk revealed that during Tesla’s most challenging period in 2017, he had reached out to Apple to discuss the firm purchasing the electric car maker.

But Apple’s Tim Cook refused to meet him.

And in November 2020, Musk had revealed that during the period leading up to the launch of the Model 3 (in July 2017), finances at Tesla were under severe strain.

So much so that Musk admitted that Tesla came within “a month” of bankruptcy in the lead up to the mass production of the Model 3.