Elon Musk Passed Bill Gates As The Second Richest Person In The World

24/11/2020

Amid the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, most businesses and companies are losers.

With restrictions and regulations, social distancing and governments' rules that are imposed, many cannot operate like how they normally would. As a result, employees are laid off, and finance crumble.

A few businesses however, shine during this period.

Some of which, includes technology companies. One of them, is Tesla.

Following a yet another surge in the company's share price, 49-year-old founder Elon Musk has his net worth soared $7.2 billion to $127.9 billion. Musk who has added at least $100 billion to his net worth this 2020, is the most of anyone according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

And this time, the serial entrepreneur has passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world's second-richest person.

Elon Musk talks to the press as he arrives at the construction site of a Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin on September 03, 2020
Elon Musk talks to the press as he arrives at the construction site of a Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin on September 03, 2020. (Credit: Getty Images)

Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla; founder of The Boring Company; chairman of SolarCity; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI.

His business ventures started when he co-founded Zip2, a web software company, which was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. With the money, Musk founded X.com, an online bank. The company was then merged with Confinity in 2000, which had launched PayPal the previous year.

It was then bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.

Musk's increase in wealth has been largely driven by Tesla, which has a market value of around $500 billion.

Musk’s milestone marks only the second time in the Bloomberg index’s eight-year history that Gates has ranked lower than number two.

Gates was the first centibillionaire in the modern world of tech, and held the richest man in the world title for years, before being passed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2017.

At this time, among Bloomberg Index's top 10 billionaires, 5 are centibillionaires. Also in the top 10, 7 are people in the tech business.

Beside Bezos, Musk and Gates, they are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer.

Read: Bill Gates Becomes Third Richest Man In The World: The First Time In 7 Years