Elon Musk Becomes World’s Richest Person Surpassing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

New Delhi:  Tesla founder Elon Musk has become the world’s richest person, as his net worth crossed $185 billion by taking over Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ position who had held it since October 2017. He became the richest person in the world after Tesla’s share saw a jump on Thursday. Also Read – Tesla to Finally Enter India in 2021: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari

A 4.8 per cent rally in Tesla’s share price took Musk past Bezos, with a net worth of $188.5 billion, 1.5 billion more than Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017. This year, Musk’s net worth increased by more than $150 billion and Tesla’s share price surged a massive 743 per cent last year. Also Read – Tesla’s First Car in India? Company Likely to Launch Model 3 by June 2021

Earlier on Wednesday, the 49-year-old Musk’s electric car company Tesla had surged in value and hit a market value of $700 billion for the first time. Reacting to the news as an user shared it, Musk replied in his signature style, “How Strange”. Also Read – Jeff Bezos’s Ex-Wife Donates $4 Billion in 4 Months, That’s Equal to Rs 2,94,01,00,00,000; Can You Even Count It?

How strange

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

The tycoon also has an older tweet pinned to his account, which reads, “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth, and half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens and we destroy ourselves.”

As per a Bloomberg report, Musk, has benefited from Tesla’s stratospheric rise in more than one way. In addition to his 20% stake in the automaker, he’s sitting on about $42 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options. Those securities come from two grants he received in 2012 and 2018, the latter of which was the largest pay deal ever struck between a CEO and a corporate board.

During an interview last month, Musk told Axel Springe that the key purpose of his wealth is to “accelerate humanity’s evolution into a spacefaring civilisation”.

The world’s 500 richest people added a record $1.8 trillion to their combined net worth last year, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Tesla delivered 499,550 vehicles in 2020, slightly missing its most recent guidance of 5,00,000 vehicles.

In the fourth quarter, Tesla delivered 1,61,650 Model 3 and Model Y cars and produced 1,63,660 such vehicles.

The automaker also delivered 18,920 Model S and X vehicles and produced 16,097 of them.

“In 2020, we produced and delivered half a million vehicles, in line with our most recent guidance. In addition, Model Y production in Shanghai has begun, with deliveries expected to begin shortly,” the company said in a statement last week.

The company achieved the feat despite closing its new factory in China as well as its vehicle plant in Fremont, California for several weeks as the new coronavirus spread.

Musk also tweeted: “So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone! At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all”.

Tesla delivered 88,400 vehicles in Q1, and 90,650 vehicles in Q2.

In October, Tesla said it delivered 1,39,300 vehicles during the third quarter, slightly better than the 1,37,000 Wall Street had expected.

For the year, Tesla delivered 4,42,511 Model 3 and Model Y cars, while producing 4,54,932 of the vehicles. It delivered 57,039 Model S and Model X cars while producing 54,805 such vehicles.

Musk has proclaimed that he wants to increase Tesla’s vehicle sales volume from about 5,00,000 in 2020 to 20 million annually over the next decade.

Late last month, Musk told Tesla employees in an email to ‘go all out’ in order to achieve the 5 lakh vehicle delivery goal.