Tesla’s Elon Musk becomes world’s richest person

Elon Musk, Tesla Incorporated’s electric auto-maker and owner, has become the world’s richest entrepreneur adding $165.5 billion of wealth in the past year. 

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Presently he has surpassed Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, who’s held the spot since 2017

A statement that seemed outlandish one year ago became plausible, then almost inevitable as Tesla Inc.’s share price climbed higher and higher in 2020.

On Thursday it finally happened. The electric-automaker’s shares surged 7.9%, boosting Musk past Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.

Musk is worth $194.8 billion, or $9.5 billion more than Bezos, whose Blue Origin is a rival to Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Ltd., or SpaceX, in the private space race.

Tesla’s ascent thrusts its brash founder into a role occupied by only a handful of other people in recent decades and underscores the dramatic stock moves that have upended the global wealth rankings of late.

Over the past year the South Africa-born engineer has added more than $165 billion to his fortune in what’s probably the fastest bout of wealth creation in history.

Fueling his rise was an unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share price, which surged 743% last year on the back of consistent profits, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and enthusiasm from Wall Street and retail investors alike.

The shares have gained more than 23,900% since its 2010 initial public offering, including a 5-for-1 stock split last year.

The jump in Tesla’s stock price further inflates a valuation light-years apart from other automakers on numerous metrics. Tesla produced just over half-a-million cars last year, a fraction of the output of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co.

Its market value of $773.5 billion is bigger than that of Facebook Inc. Larry Ellison’s 2% stake in Tesla alone would be enough to place the Oracle Corp. founder among the world’s 175 richest people (including his Oracle shares he’s ranked 10th).

Musk’s rise is even more astonishing given his dust-ups and gaffes in recent years, typically exacerbated by his spontaneous tweets. In 2018 he agreed to pay a $20 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission and step down as chairman of Tesla after tweeting a notion to take the company private at $420 a share, with “funding secured. ” Something he never did.

Still, he’s gotten on board with at least one trend among the super-rich. He confirmed last month he’d personally relocated from California to Texas, a state that has gained new popularity among the wealthy for levying zero income tax.

Suzan O