Elon Musk passes Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world

The founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, overtook the head of Amazon on Thursday, Jeff Bezos, as the richest person in the world, according to the real-time list maintained by Bloomberg.

The sharp rise in Tesla shares, which rose this year and gained over 5% on Wall Street today, That puts Musk’s fortune at about $ 188.5 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates, which would exceed Bezos by about $ 1.5 billion.

Forbes Magazine, which also has a real-time list of fortunes, for now, it still puts Musk behind the founder of Amazon, which has seen its assets rise sharply since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bezos has been the richest person in the world for the past three years, according to the Forbes ranking, previously led in 18 of the last 24 years by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

According to Bloomberg, Bezos would have had by far the greatest fortune had it not been for his divorce, in which he would have ceded about a quarter of his stake in Amazon to his ex-wife..

Musk reacted to the news with two short messages via Twitter, in which he remarked “how strange” and “wow, back to work”.

The controversial businessman has seen his fortune multiply in the last year, with an increase of over $ 150,000 million due to the “rally” of Tesla shares, which appreciated by 743% in 2020.

Musk, 49, owns about 20 percent of the company’s electric vehicle securities and about $ 42 billion in options he received from the company, according to Bloomberg.

In addition, he is the head of the space company Space X, a field in which he also competes with Bezos, who runs Blue Origin.

Musk recently revealed that he tried to sell Tesla to Apple years ago when his company was struggling, but that his proposal – which would have valued the company at a tenth of its current value – was rejected by the tech giant.

In addition, in December, Musk announced that he had left his residence in the technological area known as Silicon Valley (California) and moved to Texas, where his companies have a growing presence.