Elon Musk has once again managed to secure the title of the World’s Richest Man in the wake of share in popular electric automaker Tesla rapidly climbed over the past few months.
The entrepreneur has once again secured the distinction from the chief executive of the company which owns the Louis Vuitton and Hennessy luxury brands, French businessman Bernard Arnault, as reported by the most recent data made public by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk now has a fortune that has been estimated to sit at close to $187 billion, a spike of well over $50 billion from the start of this year.
This rapid increase in net worth Musk was attributable to the rapidly climbing stock value of Tesla, in which Musk was a very early investor and over which he sits as the current chief executive, from $108.10 on the very first day of trading for the year to $210.04 as of Tuesday morning, marking a spike of close to 94% in just a little under two months.
Arnault is meanwhile sitting at a net worth of just about $185 billion, he is followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is worth $117 billion, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who is sitting at a staggering $114 billion.
As an American citizen who comes from South Africa, Musk started the new year sporting a net worth of just about $137 billion after he became the first person in history to lose well over $200 billion from his personal fortune, as stated in a report from Bloomberg. He finalized the acquisition of social media titan, Twitter late last year in a deal costing close to $44 billion that a number of analysts thought to be a severe overvaluation of the social media company.
A number of Tesla investors were worried that the buyout of Twitter would distract Musk from what he needed to do for the automotive firm. The company nevertheless ended p posting record-breaking financial performance for the last quarter of 2022. “We achieved the highest-ever quarterly revenue, operating income and net income in our history,” stated the company via an earnings report. “As we progress into 2023, we know that there are questions about the near-term impact of an uncertain macroeconomic environment, and in particular, with rising interest rates. The Tesla team is used to challenges, given the culture required to get the company to where it is today.”
All the while, Tesla continues to expand its physical impact throughout the United States and the world as a whole: executives unveiled plans to build another two factories to be located in Nevada which will increase the manufacturing capacity for battery cells, while CEO Musk has taken part in talks with a number of officials from the Mexican government to build even more factories throughout the Latin American country.
