Tesla's Soaring Rise... Musk Eyeing Jeff Bezos' Spot as 'World's Richest'

As of the 6th, Musk's assets total $181 billion
$3 billion gap with No.1 Bezos

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
Photo by AP Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is eyeing the top spot held by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, who is ranked number one among the world's billionaires. Thanks to the rise in Tesla's stock price, the asset gap between the two has narrowed to $3 billion (approximately 3.3 trillion KRW), allowing Musk to challenge for the title of the world's richest person.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on the 6th (local time), Musk's total assets were estimated at $181 billion as of that day. Bezos, currently ranked number one, has assets worth $184 billion, a $3 billion difference from Musk. Since the beginning of the year, Musk's assets have increased by $11.4 billion, while Bezos's assets have decreased by $6.31 billion. Considering this, the $3 billion gap could close very quickly.

Musk's assets surged from $30.2 billion in January last year to $150 billion in just one year. In January last year, he was ranked 35th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but as his assets grew, his ranking quickly changed, and by November last year, he surpassed Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MS) and the world's second-richest person.

Musk's assets have been increasing along with Tesla's stock price rise. Thanks to last year's revenue growth and various positive factors including Tesla's inclusion in the S&P 500 index, Tesla's stock price rose more than 700%, causing Musk's assets, who holds a 20% stake in Tesla, to surge as well. On this day, Tesla's stock closed at $755.98, up 2.84%. During the trading session, the stock price rose as much as 4.9%, pushing Tesla's market capitalization above $730 billion at one point, nearly catching up to Facebook's market cap of $756 billion.

Born in 1971 and turning 50 this year, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. In an interview last month, despite his astronomical wealth increase, he expressed little interest in material things and stated that, conscious of SpaceX's Mars exploration efforts, the purpose of his wealth is rather to accelerate humanity's evolution into a space-traveling civilization.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.