Elon Musk is back on top. The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer’s wealth rose to $199.9 billion after the rocket company he founded completed another funding round, vaulting him atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the second time this year.
He surpassed Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, who briefly reclaimed the title as the world’s richest person this week after Tesla shares fell and dragged down Musk’s net worth. Bezos is worth $194.2 billion.
SpaceX raised another $850 million this month from a group of investors led by Sequoia Capital. The round values the company at $74 billion, a 60% jump from August, and helped boost Musk’s net worth by about $11 billion, according to the index.
Musk has been at the front and centre of some of the biggest market events so far this year. The eccentric billionaire fanned the flames of GameStop Corp share rally and sent the stocks of Shopify Inc., Signal Advance Inc., Etsy Inc., and CD Projekt SA rolling with his booster shot tweets.
He also stirred up the price of Bitcoin and even Dogecoin, a little-known cryptocurrency that surged after his tweet earlier this month. Meanwhile, Bitcoin raced past $50,000 days after Tesla disclosed that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
Also this week, Musk invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to a chat on Clubhouse, the social media app. A spokesperson for the Kremlin said Putin doesn’t use social media, but added that the invitation was “undoubtedly very interesting.”
