Elon Musk Overtakes Jeff Bezos To Be The Richest Man In The World

Elon Musk has overtaken Jeff Bezos to become the richest man on the planet.

The SpaceX boss is now worth £138 billion ($188bn), pipping Amazon's Bezos to the post by a mere billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index.

Thanks to an increase in Tesla's share price on Thursday (7 January), Musk pushed past Bezos.

Reacting to the news on Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur simply responded: "How strange. Well back to work."

Musk is pioneering space exploration, hoping to begin commercial travel outside the earth's atmosphere.

This is on top of his hugely successful electric car company Tesla, and it was announced last month that Musk's company was worth more than the seven other leading car manufacturers combined.

While Musk has made his billions from innovation in technology, Bezos has built the world's most profitable delivery company. What started out as an online bookseller became an e-commerce and multimedia giant.

It comes after Musk overtook Bill Gates as the second richest person in the world back in November last year.

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At the time, the SpaceX CEO saw his fortune rise to $127.9bn (£95.8bn) pushing Gates, Microsoft co-founder, from second place.

Reporting on the change, Bloomberg claimed the move was thanks to a 6.58 percent rise in Tesla's shares, accounting for a $7.2bn increase.

Due in large part to the global coronavirus pandemic, and more of us relying on the platform than ever, Bezos has seen his net worth soar over the past year.

But it wasn't just about making money for Bezos.

The 56-year-old recently announced he was making a $10bn (£7.6bn) donation to help fight climate change.

Sharing news of his philanthropy, Bezos took to Instagram to explains why he was doing it.

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He wrote: "I've spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who've made it their life's work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world.

"I'm inspired by what they're doing, and excited to help them scale.

"Today, I'm pleased to announce the first Bezos Earth Fund recipients - 16 organizations working on innovative, ambitious, and needle-moving solutions. This $791 million in donations is just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others. We can all protect Earth's future by taking bold action now."

Elon Musk's most recent project is his most ambitious, and he hopes his ambitious Starship rocket will be able to one day transport people to the moon and Mars - something that he reckons will eventually allow us to build a sustainable colony on the red planet by 2050.

Topics: elon musk, jeff bezos

Amelia Ward

Amelia is a journalist at LADbible. After studying journalism at Liverpool John Moores and Salford Uni (don't ask), she went into PR and then the world of music. After a few years working on festivals and events, she went back to her roots. In her spare time, Amelia likes music, Liverpool FC, and spending good, quality time with her cat, Paul. You can contact Amelia at [email protected].

@ameliasward