Elon Musk becomes world’s second-richest person

It must be a hard day in the Gates household. Tech-entrepreneur Elon Musk has officially taken the second-richest person-in-the-world title from Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.

This comes only a week after he took the third-place spot from Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

Musk’s net worth currently stands at $128 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

This places him after Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, currently boasting a net worth of $182 billion. Bezos is predicted to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2026. Musk will have to put in some serious legwork to take that number one spot.

Musk jumped into the second-place spot after his company Tesla, the world’s most valuable car company, saw a 4.6% rise in its stock prices. This sudden rise was driven by the news that Tesla’s shares will be added to the S&P 500 index, one of the top stock market indexes in the US. 

Surprisingly, this comes after Musk sliced $14 billion off Tesla’s value and $3 million off his own net worth earlier this year because he expressed in a tweet that he felt “Tesla stock price is too high imo”.

This is just another addition to a few interesting developments that the 49-year old Musk had this year.

His other noteworthy venture, Space X, launched the United States’ first-crewed space flight in almost a decade in May. It also marks the first time a privately made craft has taken passengers into Earth’s orbit. Just last week, these astronauts docked their Crew Dragon spacecraft aboard the International Space Station.

And let us not forget Neuralink, Musk’s foray into the world of brain-implant technology. Earlier this year he unveiled Gertrude, a pig implanted with the Neuralink chip that was able to track its neural activity.

As controversial a character Elon Musk might be, one can’t help but wonder what his next surprise will be.

Feature image: Nasa HQ Photo via Flickr

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