Tesla CEO Elon Musk has passed Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world
The SpaceX founder has been ascending the globe’s rich list in recent weeks amid Tesla’s relentless rally of shares. Most recently, the company enjoyed a stock split of 5-1 – essentially, one share was divided into five, without the value of the investors’ holdings being affected.
Musk’s latest increase of $11.7 billion places his fortune at $115 billion, just $5 billion ahead of the Facebook chief.
With a lower share price and more being available, smaller investors have been piling into Tesla’s stock. In addition to the stock split, the tech company’s growing reputation online has seen its shares surge by 500% this year alone.
Incredibly, Tesla’s $464 billion market value now exceeds Walmart Inc., the largest company in the US by revenue, as reported by Bloomberg. To give an insight into its popularity, around 40,000 accounts with online trading firm Robinhood Financial bought Tesla shares in just four hours last month.
Even during the course of a pandemic, Musk’s net worth has seen an eye-watering increase of $87.8 billion throughout 2020. Around halfway through August he became the world’s fourth-richest person, before earning centibillionaire status just last week.
His leap ahead of Zuckerberg is set to grow further soon – a recent pay deal with Tesla’s board of directors could see him bag around $50 million, which would mark the largest pay deal ever struck between a CEO and a company’s board of directors.
Alas, the number one spot has been held by the same e-commerce titan for quite some time: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, with a whopping fortune of $202 billion. However, Musk ‘really couldn’t care less’ about the figures, apparently. ‘These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love,’ he said in July
