Elon Musk has become the world’s richest person after surpassing Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos.
This may have seemed unbelievable about one year ago, but it was almost inevitable by the time when Tesla Inc.’s share price climbed higher and higher in 2020.
On Thursday it happened that the electric automaker’s shares increased 7.9%, boosting Musk past Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk is worth $195 billion, or $10 billion more than Bezos, whose Blue Origin is a competitor to Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Ltd., or SpaceX, in the private space race.
Such a dramatic shift as we have seen in the rise of Elon Musk’s wealth was unseen before. During the last year, the South Africa-born engineer has added over $165 billion to his fortune which might be the fastest bout of wealth creation in history. Fueling his increase was an unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share price, which increased 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 over 23,900% since its 2010 initial public offering, including a 5-for-1 stock split last year.
The boost in Tesla’s stock price also inflates a valuation light-years apart from other automakers on numerous metrics. The company produced nearly half-a-million cars last year, a fraction of the output of the largest American automakers such as Ford Motor. and General Motors.
