Tesla CEO Elon Musk started new year by homing in on a characteristically audacious title: the richest person on the planet. 2.8% rally in the electric carmaker’s share price Wednesday boosted Musk to within $3 billion of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, who currently is at first place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The South Africa-born engineer’s net worth was $181.1 billion on Wednesday, just shy of Bezos, who has held the top spot for two years. Over the past year, Musk's net worth increased by more than $150 billion in possibly the fastest bout of wealth creation toll now. Fueling his rise was an unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share price, which surged 743% last year on the back of consistent profits, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and enthusiasm from Wall Street and retail investors alike.
Musk has benefited from Tesla’s stratospheric rise in more than one way. Besides his 20% stake in the automaker, he’s sitting on about $40 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options.
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