Elon Musk Becomes The Richest Person In The World Overtaking Jeff Bezos

CEO Tesla Elon Musk (Photo: Twitter @elonmusk)

JAKARTA - Tesla CEO Elon Musk became the richest person on the planet surpassing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, thanks to the ever-rising Tesla stock price.

As reported by Antara, Friday, January 8, Musk now has a fortune of about $ 188 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaire index.

"How strange," said Musk, Thursday January 7, responding to news about it. "Well, back to work ..." quoted from The Verge,

Musk surpassed Bezos' personal fortune of around $ 187 billion, marking the latest development in the years-long rivalry between the two tech kings.

Bezos is reportedly very jealous of Musk's success in securing a 1.3 billion incentive package for the Tesla plant in Nevada that was to serve as Amazon's headquarters.

Bezos also owns the spaceflight company Blue Origin, as does Musk with SpaceX. The two men competed, and SpaceX won the competition by making it to orbit.

Musk just took the position of Bill Gates last November as the second richest person in the world. Musk's personal fortune skyrocketed in 2020 to more than $ 150 billion, in large part because Musk owns a lot of Tesla shares - about 20 percent of the company's shares.

Tesla's stock grew over the past year, as Musk managed to take the company out of "production hell," and dramatically boost sales of its electric vehicles thanks to the more affordable Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs.

Musk's stock continues to grow, especially after he signed a 10-year compensation plan with Tesla in 2018 that was approved by shareholders. Musk gets an incentive every time Tesla hits a new milestone, which he received this year is worth an estimated $ 800 million.

Like most billionaires, Musk has seen an increase in wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. But unlike other billionaires, Musk claimed to be "money poor" and "financially illiquid" in 2019, and last year said he would sell "almost any physical property," including his mansion.

He took a loan from stocks that made him so rich and returned the money to his company, such as when he threw an estimated $ 100 million at The Boring Company in 2018.

Musk has a long history of using his personal wealth to fund new ventures, such as the time he funded Tesla and SpaceX, after becoming a millionaire running Zip2 and PayPal.

Musk is now perhaps the richest person in the world by Bloomberg and Forbes standards, who are focused on money, although he does tend to focus on counting known assets. However, leaders, such as Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman, are both very rich personally in ways that are harder to quantify.