Tesla Founder Elon Musk Becomes World's Richest Man

Steph Deschamps / January 8, 2021

The founder of high-end electric vehicle maker Tesla Elon Musk became the richest man in the world thanks to the soaring stock market shares, dethroning Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, the agency calculated. Bloomberg finance press.

Thanks to the surge in Tesla shares - of which he owns 18% - on Wall Street, the whimsical 49-year-old entrepreneur, who also heads SpaceX, passed Thursday morning in front of Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, according to the calculations of the Bloomberg agency which maintains a ranking of billionaires.

Jeff Bezos held the title of richest man on the planet since 2017.

While Tesla stock, which saw its value multiplied by more than 7 in 2020 and was still advancing strongly on Wall Street on Thursday, the fortune of the engineer of South African origin, reached 188.5 billion dollars shortly after the opening of the meeting, exceeding that of Jeff Bezos by 1.5 billion.

The day before, Tesla broke the $ 700 billion mark at the close for the first time as the stock finished up almost 3% to $ 755.98.

As of Thursday morning, the stock was close to $ 800, climbing 5.7%.

Group sales, however, remain far from traditional manufacturers: Tesla only sold 499,550 cars in 2020, a long way from Volkswagen, for example, and its 11 million vehicles sold in 2019.

But Tesla is benefiting from investor enthusiasm for electric vehicles and the fact that it has managed to make money for five consecutive quarters, which allowed it to enter the prestigious S & aP 500 Index in December.