Tesla CEO Elon Musk beats Amazon's Jeff Bezos to become world's richest person

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now the richest person in the world, according to latest data on Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI), which is a ranking of the world's 500 wealthiest people. Musk's net worth now stands at over $188 billion, one billion dollars more than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's net worth of $187 billion, thanks to the continued rise in Tesla's stock price. Bezos had been the richest person since 2017.

On achieving this feat, Musk reacted in his style, replying to a Twitter user sharing the news with the remark "how strange".

On Thursday, Tesla shares jumped by 6.19 per cent to hit record high of $802.75 after opening higher at $777.63 against the previous closing price of $755.98. The stock saw surge in buying after analysts at RBC Capital Markets ended bearish call on Tesla Inc. shares with an upgrade to sector perform from underperform. The shares of American electric vehicle company have zoomed over 740 per cent in 2020 on the back of strong revenue growth, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and higher enthusiasm on Wall Street. It has gained 78 per cent over the past three months as compared to 10 per cent rise in S&P 500. Meanwhile, Amazon shares were up 1.78 per cent at $3,194.33.

Musk, who begun 2020 with worth around $27 billion, saw his wealth surging by a staggering $150 billion, which indicates sharp financial turnaround for the outspoken entrepreneur. This is reportedly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history.

The South Africa-born engineer has benefited from strong rally in Tesla shares, who owns 20 per cent stake in the automaker. Besides, he also sits on around $42 billion of unrealised paper gains on vested stock options, which he received in 2012 and 2018. Adding to this, Musk reportedly holds majority stake in Space-X, which accounts for about $15 billion.

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