The world’s richest man has welcomed in the new year by becoming even richer - $32 billion richer.
According to Forbes, Elon Musk is now worth approximately $304.2 billion, thanks to a stellar year for Tesla.
Back in November, Musk’s worth briefly passed $300 billion, making him the first person ever to do so.
And now he has done it again, allowing him to maintain his top-spot on Forbes’ rich list as the new year begins.
Interestingly, his billionaire rival Jeff Bezos sits in third place on the list, as Bernaud Arnault, the CEO of French fashion empire LVMH, nabs the second spot.
Elon Musk’s growing fortune has been credited to Tesla’s rising stock price, as the company manufactured around 936,000 vehicles in 2021, far surpassing projections by analysts.
The company did announce they had to recall 475,000 of its cars built between 2014 and 2021, but this clearly didn’t make much of a difference to the world’s richest man’s fortune.
Forbes reported that Tesla shares increased by over 13 percent by market close, as well as the company’s market capitalisation topping the $1 trillion mark.
Musk, who was named Time Magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year, owns 15.6 percent of Tesla’s stock.
According to reports, he sold 15.7 million Tesla shares throughout 2021, totalling a whopping $16 billion before tax.
It would be reasonable to assume that a net worth like Musk’s comes with a hefty tax bill.
The Tesla CEO took to Twitter in December to let everyone know he would pay around $11 billion in taxes for 2021.
However, if this is true, it only represents an estimated 0.0036 percent of his net worth.
In 2021 alone, Musk increased his net worth by $121 billion which, according to Forbes, is the largest one-year gain made by any billionaire since the news outlet started tracking the net worth of the world’s wealthiest.
If all goes to plan, 2022 will only bring greater riches for Musk, just as long as Tesla meets its operational and valuation goals.
However, even the richest man in the world’s fortune was not without its ups and downs in 2021.
Following a Twitter poll, the 50-year-old sold over $1 billion worth of Tesla stocks, which caused shares to plummet by around 4.6 percent.
The billionaire’s own fortune was hit by the controversial move, as his net worth reportedly plunged by a whopping $50bn (£37bn) in just two days.
Abbi Murray