Elon Musk had a crazy 2020 but it looks like 2021 is going to be a crazier year for him as he is just $4 billion short defeating Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.
Reported first by Bloomberg, this spike in his valuation has come after a 2.8 percent surge in the share price of Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla on Wednesday. This boosted Musk within $3 billion of Amazon founder, who currently claims the throne for the richest man in the world and has been doing so for nearly three years, since 2017.
Elon Musk¡¯s net worth went as high as $181.1 billion as of Wednesday, roughly $4 billion shy of Jeff Bezos, who currently holds the richest person in the world title. Last year has been nothing short of amazing for the eccentric billionaire where he saw his valuation soar over $150 billion, one of the fastest surges in wealth creation in history.
Contributing to his rise was the spike in the share price of his electric car company which went up 743 percent after witnessing consistent profits as well as the inclusion in the S&P 500 Index. Musk has a 20 percent stake in the electric car company. Moreover, he has about $40 billion of unrealised paper gains on vested stock options that originate from two grants he received in 2012 and 2018 with the latter being the largest pay deal to occur between a CEO and a corporate board.
What¡¯s even more fascinating is Tesla¡¯s stock prices are way, way higher than any other automobile company in its competition and it is doing so by shipping the least amount of cars out. It produced around half a million cars last year which is nowhere close to what American carmakers like Ford, GM and Japanese carmakers like Toyota, Honda are capable of.
Just two months back in November, Musk pushed Bill Gates on the list to become the second richest person in the world.
It¡¯ll be interesting to see if Musk ever manages to overthrow Bezos for the first time in three years. Do you think he can make it? Tell us in the comments below.