Elon Musk overtakes Jeff Bezos to become world’s richest person
Elon Musk has overtaken Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person.
Including today’s gains in Tesla shares, Musk, who founded Tesla and Space X, had a net worth of more than $188.5bn – $1.5bn more than Bezos, according to a Bloomberg report.
Tesla’s share price soared 700 per cent last year and the company was admitted to the S&P 500 index in December.
Its market capitalisation has now reached almost $670bn, making it the sixth most valuable publicly-listed US company.
Tesla defied a coronavirus-induced downturn seen in the wider automotive industry, and achieved a year of bumper growth.
The electric car maker delivered 499,950 vehicles during the year, well above Wall Street expectations of 481,261 vehicles.
The eccentric billionaire has publicly said he would like to use his money to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars.