Elon Musk passes Mark Zuckerberg to become world’s third-richest man

There are only two men in the world richer than Elon Musk. This is how the Tesla boss added $88 billion to his fortune this year.

Mark Zuckerberg’s reign as the third-richest person on Earth didn’t last long after Tesla boss Elon Musk’s wealth soared to new heights.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder has added a staggering $87.8 billion to his fortune this year, taking his net worth to $115.4 billion.

He now trails Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos – the world’s richest person after his net worth recently topped $200 billion – and Microsoft’s Bill Gates who is worth $124.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Zuckerberg, who recently joined the ranks to become a centibillionaire (a person whose new worth is over $100 billion) is worth $110.8 billion.

Musk has seen his fortune grow more than anyone else this year, narrowly beating Bezos, whose own net worth is up $87.6 billion as homebound consumers have turned to Amazon for all their shopping needs during the pandemic.

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Elon Musk has overtaken Mark Zuckerberg as the third-richest person in the world. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Tesla’s shares have been on a dizzying rally this year that has seen the company’s market cap more than quadruple.

Since the start of the pandemic, Tesla shares have shot up around five-fold.

The electric automaker on Monday underwent a 5-for-1 stock split, sending its share price up more than 12 per cent. Tesla’s market cap now sits at $457.4 billion.

As the share price goes up, so does Musk’s wealth, as his contract sees he gets paid big bonuses when the stock price of Tesla goes up.

In May alone, he qualified for $US700 million ($A980 million). With the recent rise in the Tesla stock price he qualifies for another $US2.1 billion ($A2.9 billion) extra – on top of the money he got in May.

On Tuesday Tesla revealed plans to take advantage of its meteoric stock rise by raising up to $US5 billion ($A6.8 billion) through a program to sell more shares of the popular electric vehicle company.

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All smiles: Elon Musk has added $87.8 billion to his fortune this year – so far. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

Tesla became the world’s most valuable carmaker by market capitalisation when it overtook former frontrunner Toyota in July this year. Oh what a feeling...

This now makes the total value of the electric car company bigger than the value of Toyota – even though Toyota makes and sells 9 million cars a year and Tesla sells only about 4 per cent as many as that.

The electric vehicle company now accounts for more than 40 per cent of the total market cap of a group of 12 of the world’s largest automakers.

However, Tesla’s financial year results revealed that the company sold fewer cars than the same period last year, and made less revenue than the same period last year.

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The tech entrepreneur has recently had a son with partner Grimes. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

No stranger to controversy, Musk recently came under fire for implanting computer control interfaces in the brains of pigs, with leading animal rights advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) calling for him to install one in his own brain instead.

Neuralink, a third company he helped found, is working to install “brain-machine interfaces” that would allow a person to control a computer using only their thoughts. It has far-reaching applications, and is hoped one day to be used to restore mobility and autonomy to people with brain injuries or disorders.

And we can’t forget he hit the news earlier this year after naming his son X AE A-XII. Must and his partner Grimes were forced to slightly change the original spelling, X Æ A-12, after Californian law wouldn’t allow digits and special characters. The baby boy was born on May 4, with the nickname ‘Little X’.

Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, explained on Twitter that the X represents “the unknown variable” and “Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)”. The A-12 part of the name is a tribute to the CIA’s Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane.