Callum Jones
Elon Musk is officially the world's richest person again after being briefly overtaken by a fellow billionaire on Wednesday (10 September).
The SpaceX founder has topped global rich lists for several years now, due to rapid growth in the electronic vehicles market, his acquisition of X, formerly Twitter, as well as the work going on at SpaceX.
And Musk has been top of that chart for a very long time, and to be honest, I think no one really expected that to change anytime soon.
I mean, when you own some of the biggest companies in the world, you're likely never going to lose that top spot are you?
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But what happened this week very much surprised economic experts, as a new richest person took the number one crown for a very short time.
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With fluctuating numbers, the world's richest person can change very suddenly - and that's exactly what happened on Wednesday morning after Larry Ellison overtook Musk for top spot.
Ellison's wealth hit a whopping $393 billion, trumping Musk's $385 billion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Tech company Oracle saw shares jumped a whopping 40 percent, which improved Ellison's already impressive net worth given the company makes up a significant part of the 81-year-old's wealth.
The American businessman and entrepreneur allegedly jumped by $101 billion after his company announced quarterly results had surpassed previous expectations, which allowed him to overtake the Tesla CEO.
Oracle's share price lost some of those impressive gains come end of the day on Wednesday, meaning Musk took the crown of world's richest person once more.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has been bested for the title. After capturing the title of wealthiest person on the planet for the first time in 2021, he has relinquished it to both LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over the years.
Musk's latest eye-watering wealth figures come after the Tesla board of directors unveiled a new pay package that could see their CEO have up to 423.7 million additional shares of stock in the next decade if shareholders approve.
While these additional shares may be worth $148.7 billion as of Tesla's closing price last Friday, forecasts on the upper end predict Musk could pocket close to $1 trillion in a best case scenario for the billionaire.
It should be worth noting that Musk will only get these shares if Tesla becomes worth $8.5 trillion, which is eight times as much as it it today.
CNN reports that this is twice as much as any company has ever been worth.
While Musk may be hoping a pay rise is on the way, the message from the Tesla board is clear.
The CEO of the company was pre-occupied running DOGE in the Trump administration earlier this year, and the car company's message is that Musk must now focus on Tesla.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, wrote: "The simple message the board is sending to Elon: ‘We want your attention on Tesla. Implicit in that message is the promise that he’ll have the control he’s been seeking (a 25% stake) and that it will be worth his time."