Elon Musk Net Worth As Tesla Boss Soars Past Bill Gates to Become World's Second Richest Person
Elon Musk's total net worth soared to $128 billion this week, earning him the title of second-richest person in the world.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss today surpassed a slew of technology industry billionaires, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, only trailing behind the $182 billion fortune amassed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The figures were confirmed by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks the world's richest people. With a net worth of around $102 billion, Zuckerberg is currently placed in fifth place after being overtaken by the French businessman Bernard Arnault.
The Index suggests Gates' net worth is also around $128 billion, however Musk's wealth enjoyed a $7.24 billion spike in the past day, compared to Gates' $67.3 million.
Musk's wealth has surged in correlation with Tesla share pricing, which received a boost this month after it was confirmed the electric car company was set to join the S&P 500, an index of the top U.S. publicly traded companies by market capitalization.
With roughly three-quarters of his net worth tied to Tesla shares, Musk could be on track to receive a $55.8 billion bonus. As reported by The Guardian, Musk's significant bonus payout is on the condition he grows Tesla into a $650 billion company by 2028.
The S&P 500 announced on November 16 that Tesla would take its place among some of the world's most recognizable companies—including Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix—prior to the opening of trading on December 21.
Confirmation of the Tesla addition to the S&P 500 resulted in the share price rising by almost 14 percent in after-market trading.
"Tesla will be one of the largest weight additions to the S&P 500 in the last decade, and consequently will generate one of the largest funding trades in S&P 500 history," S&P DJI said in a media statement released at the time, as Reuters reported.
"Tesla itself is very liquid, and adding the stock at the upcoming December quarterly rebalancing coincides with the expiration of stock options, stock futures, stock-index options, and stock-index futures, which may help facilitate the funding trade."
According to YCharts, which tracks company stock movements, Tesla's market cap as of today (November 24) was teetering closer to $500 billion ($494.66 billion). For a comparison, Tesla's market cap on November 16 was $386.83 billion.
Broadly, market capitalization is an estimate of a company's worth as determined by the stock market.
It has been a productive year for Musk's electric car giant, which has largely continued to push out vehicles in the U.S. amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
In the company's latest quarterly financial results, Tesla estimated that it has capacity to produce and deliver 500,000 vehicles this year. "While achieving this goal has become more difficult, delivering half a million vehicles in 2020 remains our target," it said.
