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Elon Musk Surpasses Jeff Bezos As the Richest Person in the World

Elon Musk

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New York, Jan 7 (EFE).

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk surpassed Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos on Thursday as the world’s richest person, according to a real-time list maintained by Bloomberg.

The sharp rise in Tesla shares, which have soared this year and today were earning more than 5 percent on Wall Street, brings Musk’s fortune to about $188.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s estimates, which would surpass Bezos by about $1.5 billion.

Forbes magazine, which also has a list of real-time fortunes, for now continues to place Musk behind the founder of Amazon, which has also seen its assets grow strongly since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bezos has been the richest person in the world for the past three years, according to the Forbes ranking, previously led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for 18 of the past 24 years.

According to Bloomberg, Bezos would still be by far the richest person in the world if it weren’t for his divorce, in which he gave up about a quarter of his stake in Amazon to his ex-wife.

Musk reacted to the news with two short messages on Twitter, in which he noted “how strange” and “wow, back to work.”

The controversial businessman has seen his fortune multiply during the last year, with a rise of more than $150 billion thanks to the Tesla stock rally, which appreciated by 743% during 2020.

Musk, 49, has about 20% of the shares of the electric vehicle company and about $42 billion in options he received from the company, according to Bloomberg.

In addition, he is the head of the space company Space X, an area in which he also competes with Bezos, which leads Blue Origin.

Recently Musk revealed that years ago he tried to sell Tesla to Apple, when his company was struggling, but his proposal -which would have valued the company at a tenth of its current value- was rejected outright by the technology giant.

In addition, back in December Musk announced that he has left his place of residence in the technology area known as Silicon Valley (California) and has moved to Texas, where his companies have an increasing presence.

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