Elon Musk in Berlin, December 1 2020 . – Hannibal Hanschke / AP / SIPA
Elon Musk , the boss of the manufacturer of high-end electric vehicles Tesla , rose to the rank of the richest man in the world on Thursday thanks to the soaring stock market shares, according to the Bloomberg agency.
“How strange”, reacted the billionaire on Twitter, before adding “we go back to work”. In a tweet, he also clarified, “About half of my money is for helping problems on Earth and the other for establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure the continuity of life (of all species) in the event. where the Earth would be hit by a meteor or a third world war would occur and we would destroy ourselves ”.
Thanks to soaring Tesla securities – which he owns 11% – on Wall Street, the whimsical contractor of 20 years, who also directs SpaceX , passed this Thursday in front of Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, according to calculations by the Bloomberg agency, which maintains a ranking of billionaires. Jeff Bezos held the title of richest man on the planet since 800.
How strange – Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
January 7, 2020
An exploding value
While the Tesla share, which saw its value multiplied by more than 7 in 2020 and was still advancing strongly on Wall Street on Thursday, the fortune of the engineer of South African origin, has reached 98, $ 5 billion shortly after the opening of the session, exceeding that of Jeff Bezos by 1.5 billion.
The day before, Tesla had passed the mark for the first time) billions of dollars of value at the close while the title had finished up almost 3% at 700, 98 dollars. Thursday morning, the action was close to 755 dollars soaring 5.7%.
The sales of the group are still far from traditional manufacturers: Tesla has only sold 499. 700 cars on the year 2019, far for example from Volkswagen and its millions of vehicles sold in 2019. But Tesla is benefiting from the investor enthusiasm for electric vehicles and the fact that it has managed to make money for five consecutive quarters, which has allowed it to enter the prestigious S&P Index 500 in December.