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

The founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, surpassed the head of Amazon this 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 have skyrocketed this year and today gained more than 5% on Wall Street, it raises Musk’s fortune to about $ 188.5 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations, so that it would surpass Bezos by about $ 1.5 billion.

Forbes magazine, which also has a list of real-time fortunes, for now it continues to place Musk behind the founder of Amazon, Which has also seen its heritage grow strongly since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

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

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

Musk reacted to the news with two brief messages via Twitter, in which he pointed out “how strange” and “go, back to work.”

The controversial businessman has seen his fortune multiply over the past year, with a rise of more than $ 150 billion thanks to the “rally” of Tesla shares, which appreciated 1,743% during 2020.

Musk, 49, owns about 20 percent of the electric vehicle company’s shares 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, an area in which he also competes with Bezos, who leads Blue Origin.

Recently, Musk revealed that years ago he tried to sell Tesla to Apple, when his company was going through difficulties, but that his proposal – which would have valued the company at a tenth of its current value – was flatly rejected by the technology giant. .

In addition, in December Musk announced that he had left his place of residence in the technology zone known as Silicon Valley (California) and moved to Texas, where his companies are increasingly present.