Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has soared past Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $230 billion. As noted by the Daily Sceptic last week, Musk is a steely-eyed lockdown sceptic, having ignored orders to close his California-based Tesla factory and described some of the Covid restrictions in the Golden State as ‘fascist’. He’s now relocated Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. Also worth remembering that he was chastised by Newsweek for participating in a sceptical discussion about Sweden’s management of the pandemic started by me. The Daily Mail has more.
Elon Musk’s net worth has surpassed $230 billion making him the richest man on the planet after shares at Space X soar by 33% and sell for more than $100 billion, after only joining the Forbes top ten billionaire list in the middle of last year.
The Tesla CEO has now outstripped the former richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and is currently wealthier than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. …
[T]he Tesla founder recently saw his and his SpaceX company’s wealth swell after a share sale at SpaceX on October 8th worth $100 billion in a secondary offering.The company had an agreement with both new and existing investors to sell up to $755 million in SpaceX stock from insiders at $560 per share, multiple people close with the deal told CNBC.
The 33% increase in its new share price brings the company’s valuation to $100.3 billion after initially offering the deal to investors in February, when SpaceX’s valuation stood at $74 billion at 419.19 a share.
The first round of offerings raised nearly $1.2 billion, the outlet reports.
The company’s new increased valuation places it in the rare company of a private ‘centicorn’ or ‘hectocorn,’ which are companies with a valuation of $1 billion unicorns 100 times over.
According to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as of October 17th, 2021
SpaceX is now the second-most valuable private company worldwide behind only China’s Bytedance, according to CB Insights.
That’s a far cry from just over a year ago, when Musk didn’t even make Forbes top ten billionaires list, which Bezos dominated at number one with a then-net worth of $113 billion.
The SpaceX founder was quick to boast about taking the number one spot on the rich list, tweeting a second place medal at Bezos after the Blue Origin and Amazon founder shared some motivational words about his company.
Bezos had previously held the title of world’s richest person at $197.8 billion as of 2021, after the pandemic and lockdowns saw a boom in online sales.
Worth reading in full.
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