Elon Musk, the outspoken entrepreneur behind Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, is now the richest person in the world – a feat he himself finds “strange”.
Elon Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people, thanks to a 4.8% rally in the electric carmaker’s share price Thursday.
The 49-year-old entrepreneur’s net worth hit $186bn (£136bn) at 10.15am in New York on Wednesday, making him $1.5bn richer than Bezos, who had held the top spot since October 2017.
But even as his net worth touched a staggering $188.5 billion, Mr Musk himself was raring to go back to work.
On Thursday, a Twitter account called ‘Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley’ shared news to the 49-year-old business magnate becoming the world’s richest person and earned a wry response from Mr Musk himself.
“How strange,” Elon Musk responded, and followed it up by saying, “Well, back to work…”
‘How strange’, following his fastest rise in the rankings to the top of the rich list, having started 2020 with a net worth of about $27 billion, and was barely in the top 50 richest people.
Musk said he intended to use half of his fortune 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 & we destroy ourselves”.
In a series of tweets that the South African-born billionaire pinned to the top of his timeline, Musk said the reason why he wants lots of money was “not what you think”. He said he had “very little time for recreation” and doesn’t have “vacation homes or yachts or anything like that”.