NEW YORK – Elon Musk, the chief of electric automaker Tesla, has overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the richest person on the planet.
The 49-year-old added over $3 billion in wealth on Thursday following a 4.8% rally in the electric carmaker’s share price. He now sits atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.
Born June 28, 1971, South African-born American entrepreneur cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
The South Africa-born engineer’s net worth was $188.5 billion at 10:15 a.m. in New York, $1.5 billion more than Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017.
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