Elon Musk Overtakes Bill Gates To Become Second-Richest Person On Earth

Elon Musk is now the second richest person in the world, overtaking Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

It comes just weeks after the Space X CEO overtook Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in the rankings, leaving him shortly behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Musk has shot to the top of the leader board in terms of riches this year, after he was ranked as the 25th richest person in the world, according the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, back in January.

With shares now worth up to five times their original value, and Musk owning 20% of the California-based company, it’s unsurprising he has climbed so high in terms of the richest person leader board.

Tesla is now set to join the S&P 500, a stock market index that measures the performance of 500 US based companies, on December 21.

To be eligible, a company has to have a market capitalisation of a minimum of $8.2 billion, be liquid and at least half of its shares must be available to the public. Tesla had previously failed to make the cut in September.

Around three quarters of 49-year-old Musk’s wealth is down to Telsa shares, while the rest is made up of his stake in Space Exploration Technologies Corp and his beloved SpaceX.

While SpaceX doesn’t bring even half as much value, it has still been a huge year for the company, after it successfully launched four NASA astronauts into space.

Thanks to his recent surge in net-worth, Musk has knocked Bill Gates down from second place, meaning the Microsoft mogul has taken the number three spot for only the second time.

Gates, who is known to give large sums of money away to charities and organisations in need, previously held the top spot for many years, until he was overtaken by Bezos.

He said currently said to be worth $127.7 billion, however this sum would be much higher, if he hadn’t opted to give so much away over the years.

He reached the milestone on August 26, when Amazon share prices soared to more than $3,404 per share, for the first time ever.