SpaceX and Tesla CEO has overtaken the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos to become the wealthiest person on the globe.
Elon Musk has claimed the bragging rights after a recent 6% rise in Tesla (TSLA) shares early Thursday increased the value of its CEO's stock holdings and options by $10 billion.
This shot his net worth to about $191 billion while a rise of less than 2% lifted Bezos' Amazon (AMZN) shares by about $3 billion, setting his net worth at $187 billion.
According to CNN, "Bloomberg's real-time billionaire tracker still has Bezos about $3 billion ahead of Musk. But the tracker doesn't update until the end of the trading day. Bloomberg posted an article confirming Musk's title".
Reacting to the milestone, Mr. Musk tweeted: "How strange" but was quick to add "Well, back to work".
He claimed the title of the world's second-richest person from Bill Gates late November 2020 but Tesla shares have appreciated in value by 45% since then, lifting Musk's net worth by $53 billion over the past few months.
Bezos does not have any Amazon stock options, only the 53.2 million shares he has as the company's founder since he had to give 19.7 million shares to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, in his divorce.
He has also given away some shares as part of his charitable donations but his counterpart, Elon Musk has never disposed of any Tesla shares.