-
Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
-
His net worth reached $447 billion after Tesla’s stock rose and SpaceX’s valuation rose to $350 billion.
-
Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, while Tesla was worth less than $100 billion.
Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in one day.
His net worth rose to $447 billion on Wednesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla shares rose 6% and SpaceX’s valuation jumped to $350 billion on the back of employee stock sales.
Musk’s fortune has increased by $218 billion this year – an amount that surpasses the net worth of everyone else on the rich list except Amazon’s Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).
Musk is now more than twice as rich as Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).
His one-day gain – the largest in the index’s history – rivals the total wealth of Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who ranks 23rd with a fortune of $63.2 billion. It also helped push the combined wealth of the world’s 500 richest people above $10 trillion for the first time, according to Bloomberg.
Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US publicly traded companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion) and Netflix ($400 billion).
His wealth consists largely of his roughly 13% stake and some controversial stock options in Tesla, and his 42% stake in SpaceX. Musk’s other companies include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company and X Corp, formerly Twitter.
Shares of Tesla are up more than 70% this year to $425 as of Wednesday’s close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure far exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg’s Meta.
The electric vehicle maker’s shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.
Musk’s prominent role in Donald Trump’s campaign and his rise as a close adviser to the newly elected president who has tasked him with streamlining the US government have also fueled optimism around his companies.
SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion, based on the last price the company and its lenders paid to buy employee stock, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner’s valuation previously stood at $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.
It’s worth underscoring just how dramatic Musk’s leap in wealth has been. In April he was worth less than $170 billion, and five years ago he was worth only about $25 billion – about 1/18 of his net worth today.
Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the 2020 Covid crash, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.
Read the original article on Business Insider
