Elon Musk is no longer the world's richest person

Elon Musk has been knocked off the top spot and is no longer the richest person in the world.

As well as the fact he has now lost the bragging rights to having the biggest bank balance on the planet, it's also been a very rocky start to the year for the tech tycoon.

His car firm Tesla is Musk's brainchild - but it's also been the source of a series of headaches for him.

Last month, a judge in Delaware ruled that his $55 billion pay packet from the innovative vehicle company - the biggest in corporate history - was an 'unfathomable sum' which was unfair to shareholders.

The court ordered that Musk must hand the money back, while the value of Tesla shares plummeted in recent weeks in wake of the case - which helps to explain how the CEO has lost some of his wealth as of late.

The businessman, 52, is now just one of the really, really, really rich people in the world, like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, rather than the richest.

Musk is reported to boast a net worth of around $198 billion, but this is a significant drop from his financial position in 2022, when he had a whopping $304.2 billion stacked away.

So, who has stormed to the number one spot in a blaze of glory?

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None other than Jeff Bezos.

After Musk kept the seat warm for three years, the Amazon founder is now back on the throne as the richest person in the entire world, with a ridiculous net worth of $200 billion.

He came out on top of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the first time since 2021, surpassing the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bernard Arnault, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett.

It's a home away from home for Bezos as it's a feat he first achieved back in 2017.

He's sold a significant chunk of Amazon shares throughout February - to the tune of 25 million - which are the first that have been flogged since he stepped down as CEO to become the firm's executive chairman.

The 60-year-old investor vowed to sell 50 million of the shares by 2025 through Morgan Stanley, a US brokerage firm, but he is still the web giant's highest shareholder for now.

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Reports claim Amazon's market capitalisation is around $1.75 trillion after shares shot up by over 50 per cent since this time last year.

These days, Bezos is more concerned with his rocket company Blue Origin as well as his philanthropic projects, so stepping down as CEO was a necessary move - and by the looks of things, his business acumen really paid off.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the ten richest people in the world now are:

• Jeff Bezos ($200b)
• Elon Musk ($198b)
• Bernard Arnault ($197b)
• Mark Zuckerberg ($179b)
• Bill Gates ($150b)
• Steve Ballmer ($143b)
• Warren Buffett ($133b)
• Larry Ellison ($129b)
• Larry Page ($122b)
• Sergey Brin ($116b)