Elon Musk Now World's Richest Man
Move aside, Jeff Bezos, as Elon Musk is now the world’s richest man. At least according to CNBC.
His net worth is now $185 billion, thanks to increases in Tesla’s share price.
Musk started last year with $27 billion and was barely in the top 50 of the world’s richest people. So, unlike most of us, Elon had a good 2020.
This is because Tesla’s share price has increased more than ninefold in that time. The company is now worth more than $760 billion.
While Musk also owns SpaceX and has plenty of other things going on in his career, Tesla is what’s providing all the cash right now.
Yes, Tesla – an automaker that only makes four vehicles, most aimed at luxury buyers – vehicles that have been plagued with reliability issues. An automaker that’s had all sorts of production problems.
Musk’s hype of the brand probably hasn’t hurt – despite his misleading statements about Tesla offering full autonomy – Tesla’s autonomous systems are NOT fully self-driving. He’s prone to controversial statements and has an army of stans ready to defend Tesla against any criticism (god help the poor journo who writes a poor review of a Tesla model or an article even mildly critical of the company).
Tesla doesn’t even need a PR team to get love from the stock market, I guess.
A generous pay package for Musk apparently put him over Bezos, as CNBC notes that Forbes still has Bezos ahead in the horserace.
Whatever man, says I, the auto journo, typing this on a dining-room table that his parents bought when he was in high school.
Brother Elon, can you spare $100K?
[Image: Elon Musk via Musk’s Twitter account]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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So perceived wealth is true wealth?
Whenever a paradigm changing software product or tech-device generates rampant haters and avid religious believers it is sure sign the product will go on to be a dominant marketing success. Tesla is on the same trajectory as was Microsoft and Apple.
What all that snark is about? Ys Elon is rich and he fully deserves that. He spend his money on new technologies to change the world for better. " plagued with reliability issues." Like all luxury vehicles.
This just in... poor Elon just lost 14 billion. He's now the 2nd richest guy.