Elon Musk surpasses Mark Zuckerberg on the list of World’s richest people as his worth reaches $115 billion
The fight to become the richest tech overlord is heating up.
Thanks to Tesla’s stock price rise following a successful stock split that went live on Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now the third richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s count.
Musk is now worth US$115.4 billion. Astonishingly, his net worth grew by US$87.8 billion just this year, as Tesla’s stock price increased roughly fivefold.
This places Musk ahead of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is now eating his hat in anger (we’re joking, he’s probably kite surfing on his private island with way too much sunscreen on his face) since he only has a paltry US$110.8 billion. Weak.
This leaves only two tech moguls that are richer than Musk: Bill Gates, with an estimated net worth of US$125 billion, and Jeff Bezos, who’s worth US$202 billion. The way Musk has been smashing through the ranks — after all, he jumped from fifth to fourth-richest just two weeks ago — it wouldn’t be very surprising if he caught up with Gates fairly quickly.
Tesla stock price ended at US$498.3 on Monday, in its first day of trading after the five-for-one stock split, a 12.5 per cent increase. TSLA is trading at US$532.8 in premarket trading Tuesday, meaning the trend will likely continue — or another day at least.