Elon Musk has been named the richest man in the world, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk owns luxury car brand, Tesla, and private space exploration company, SpaceX. Tesla’s stock has skyrocketed in the past week, pushing the business over the 700 billion dollar mark.
With the surge in Tesla’s stock, Musk’s personal wealth reached over 185 billion dollars, passing Bezos’s 182 billion dollars. Tesla is worth more than Toyota, GM, Ford, Hyundai, and Volkswagen combined.
When the news hit Twitter, Musk reacted, saying, “How strange” and “Well, back to work…”.
Reasons Musk was able to surpass Bezos, who has held the title since 2017, was due to Amazon founder’s recent divorce. Bezos had to give his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott a 4-percent stake in Amazon. Democrats taking control of the Senate may have also been a factor in the tycoons surge in wealth, as having a more green-energy driven agenda is in favor of electric car companies such as Tesla.
What the tech giant is going to do with his excess of money is unknown but he hints to what he want to be done with an older tweet.
“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,” Musk previously tweeted.