Elon Musk Overtakes Bill Gates As World’s Second Richest

Elon Musk continues to reap financial rewards from Tesla’s rising share price, which has helped propel his personal fortune into the wealth big leagues.

Last week Musk overtook Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to become the third richest person in the world, after Tesla’s share price grew his net worth to roughly $117bn.

But further rises in Tesla’s share price has propelled Musk even further now, growing his net worth by $7.2bn (£5.4bn) to $127.9bn.

Second richest

This means that Elon Musk has now toppled Bill Gates as the world’s second-richest person.

Of course, the world’s richest man is still Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, worth a staggering $184bn. In second place had been Microsoft’s Bill Gates, worth $127.7bn after his frequent charity donations – Gates has donated more than $50 billion to help fight disease and poverty.

Musk’s net worth has grown by over $100 billion so far this year, as he still owns 20 percent of Tesla.

Back in January this year, Musk was in 35th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Tesla is the world’s most valuable car maker, by a long margin. The firm is now valued at close to $500 billion, with three quarters of Musk’s net worth comes from Tesla shares.

And the good news for Musk’s accountant does not stop there.

If Tesla’s share price growth continues, Musk could net a bonus deal worth a record $55.8bn, the Guardian newspaper reported.

To trigger the maximum payout he has to build Tesla into a $650bn company by 2028.

Bankruptcy near miss

It is a remarkable turnaround for Tesla and Elon Musk.

Earlier this month Musk admitted that Tesla was about a month from bankruptcy in mid 2017.

Elon Musk also may be ill after he took to Twitter a couple of weeks ago to warn that he may have coronavirus.

He said two tests came back positive but two other tests came back negative.