Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
A 4.8 percent rally in the electric automaker’s share price on Thursday boosted Musk past Amazon.com Inc CEO Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.
The South Africa-born engineer’s net worth climbed to US$188.5 billion, US$1.5 billion more than Bezos, who had held the top spot since October 2017. As CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, better known as SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin LLC, in the private space race.
Photo:AFP
The milestone caps an extraordinary 12 months for Musk. Over the past year, his net worth soared by more than US$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 percent 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 one-quarter of his Amazon stake to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, and his philanthropy. Bezos in November last month donated shares worth about US$680 million.
The jump in Tesla’s stock price further inflates a valuation light-years apart from other automakers on numerous metrics.
Tesla last year produced just over half-a-million vehicles, a fraction of the output of Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co.
The company is poised for further near-term gains as US Democrats captured both US Senate seats from the US state of Georgia and handed control of the US Congress to the party that’s advocated for quicker adoption of electric vehicles.
Musk, 49, has benefited from Tesla’s stratospheric rise in more than one way. In addition to his 20 percent stake in the automaker, he is sitting on about US$42 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options. Those securities come from two grants he received in 2012 and 2018, the latter of which was the largest pay deal ever struck between a CEO and a corporate board.
Despite his astronomical gains, Musk has said that he has little interest in material things and has few assets outside his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
In an interview last month, he told media group Axel Springer that the main purpose of his wealth is to accelerate humanity’s evolution into a spacefaring civilization.
“I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars,” Musk said. “That means just a lot of capital.”
After reports of his new status were published, Musk wrote on Twitter: “How strange.” “Well, back to work,” he added.
The world’s 500 richest people added a record US$1.8 trillion to their combined net worth last year, equivalent to a 31 percent increase.
The gains were disproportionately at the top, where five individuals hold fortunes in excess of US$100 billion and another 20 are worth at least US$50 billion.
Less than a week into the new year, the rankings have already been upended by extraordinary rallies. Nongfu Spring Co (農夫山泉) founder Zhong Shanshan (鍾睒睒) has vaulted past investor Warren Buffett to claim the sixth place after shares of his bottled-water company surged, adding US$15.2 billion to his fortune.
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