Elon Musk’s net worth hits $230 billion putting him above Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person

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 percent 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. Bezos, who slips into second place, appeared to not have a care in the world as he strolled around NYC with his partner Lauren Sanchez in photos obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. The couple were spotted after enjoying a dinner with Lauren’s ex Tony Sanchez at Bilbouquet in New York. 

The two have been together for about two and a half years after Bezos split with his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott in 2019. 

Bezos was all smiles after the successful launch of his Blue Origin project, which included Star Trek star William Shatner as the oldest-ever person to enter space last week. 

Meanwhile, the Tesla founder recently saw his and his SpaceX company’s wealth swell after a share sale at SpaceX on October 8 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 percent 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.  

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.  

In April of this year, Musk pledged to give away $150 million, including a $100 million prize in a carbon removal contest, where the billionaire asked participants to create workable solutions for reducing the planet’s CO2 emissions at scale in a ‘durable and sustainable way.’   

The contest started on Earth Day and will run for four years, ending on Earth Day 2025, or April 22, 2025. 

Since beginning that contest in April, his wealth has increased by around $60 billion, with Bloomberg reporting that the SpaceX deal alone added $11 billion to Musk’s net worth.

The 50-year-old began his career co-founding PayPal before moving on to found SpaceX and Tesla Motors in the early 2000s. 

Musk has seen his own net worth soar thanks to Tesla and SpaceX’s rising valuations, with the latter having raised billions in an effort to fund two capital-intensive projects, Starlink and Starship.

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access to most of the Earth, while Starship is a fully reusable launch system currently in development. 

SpaceX has already launched 1,740 Starlink satellites to date, currently providing an internet network to over 100,000 users in 14 different countries who are a part of the project’s public beta, with service priced at $99 a month.

Bezos became the first person to reach the $200 billion milestone in August 2020. He and Bezos have leap-frogged each other for the top spot in the past.    

The soaring fortunes come as Musk announced that Tesla’s headquarters were moving from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas to take advantage of the state’s lack of personal income tax.  

Musk was also following through on a promise he made more than a year ago in response to California’s strict coronavirus guidelines.

He has promised that Tesla will expand its operations in Fremont, California, despite relocating its headquarters. The Fremont plant employs more than 10,000 people.

It’s not known how many people are employed at the Palo Alto headquarters, but Tesla has previously said that the 350,000-square-foot building could accommodate up to 650 people.

The company has touted itself as one of California’s largest manufacturing employees; it said on its website that it stimulated $5.5billion in sales – and generated $4.1billion in spending- during the 2017 fiscal year.

Musk said that Tesla, which has been in Silicon Valley since 2003, has outgrown its Fremont factory.

‘It’s like we’re spam in a can here,’ he said during last Thursday’s announcement, adding that there’s sparse affordable housing and a lot of workers have a long commute.

But in Texas, Musk said, ‘Our factory’s like five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from downtown and we’re gonna create ecological paradise right here.’

While he did not give a timeline of when Tesla’s headquarters in Texas will be operational, he noted that it takes less time to build a factory than it does to reach high-volume production.

He said that the plant in Texas will closely resemble Tesla’s Shanghai plant, which was built in 11 months and reached high-volume production after a year.

Musk personally moved to Texas last December.