Elon Musk leapfrogged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday to become the world’s third-richest person, with an estimated fortune of $115 billion, according to Bloomberg .
While Zuckerberg previously sat higher in the rankings of world billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $111 billion, Musk’s fortune grew a staggering $87.8 billion this year due to a surge in Tesla Inc. stocks. Tesla shares continued to rally after undergoing a forward stock split, which pushed the organization’s co-founder Musk into third place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Monday, while Zuckerberg sank into fourth.
This development means that only two people in the world have amassed a bigger fortune than Musk — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who the publication estimated to be worth $202 billion, and Bill Gates with $125 billion.
Tesla shares have rocketed since last October, and even the coronavirus shutdown failed to hold back the corporation’s financial growth for long, The Daily Mail noted . According to Bloomberg , Tesla’s shares surged almost 500% this year, and Musk’s high-profile pay structure means that he could net more than $50 billion if all his goals are hit.
The publication noted that Tesla saw significant success among amateur investors using the online trading firm Robinhood Financial as retail investment boomed during the pandemic lockdowns. At one point last month, almost 40,000 accounts from the trading platform added Tesla shares in one four-hour period. The business now boasts a reported $464 billion market value, which is higher than that of Walmart Inc — the largest U.S. company by revenue.
This is the second recent financial milestone for Musk, who became a centibillionaire last week as his stocks rose. He joined Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg in the exclusive club for those worth over $100 billion. As The Guardian reported, Zuckerberg became a centibillionaire at the beginning of August after Facebook announced it would launch a rival to social video app TikTok.
As The Inquisitr reported in July, Tesla could be on its way to becoming the sixth ever trillion-dollar company. Billionaire Wall Street analyst Chamath Palihapitiya said that the business’s focus on renewable energy is “worth trillions of dollars.”
“It is the leading hedge when it comes to electrification and decarbonization. This is no longer about cars, that’s the first wave of growth,” he explained. “I think people are pricing in the evisceration of traditional autos and an enormous shift to [electric vehicles], of which Tesla will get the disproportionate share.”
The publication noted that just five other trillion-dollar companies currently exist: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, and Alphabet, which is Google’s parent business.
