Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk extended an extraordinary stretch of wealth gains to become a centibillionaire. Tesla Inc. shares rallied, pushing his net worth to $101 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a listing of the world’s 500 richest people.
The net worth of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos eclipsed $200 billion as shares of the e-commerce giant climbed to a record. The move simultaneously pushed his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, 50, to the brink of becoming the world’s richest woman, just behind L’Oreal SA heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers.
The gains by Bezos, 56, and Musk represent just the latest high water mark for wealth accumulation in a topsy-turvy year defined by both surging markets and catastrophic human and economic loss. The world’s 500 richest people have gained $809 billion so far this year, a 14% increase since January, even as a global pandemic caused a record drop in gross domestic product and millions of lost jobs.
The surge in wealth is especially concentrated in the upper ranks of the billionaires index and has been fueled largely by tech stocks, which have been on a tear as the pandemic drives more people online. That also includes a rise in the number of retail investors buying stocks.
Musk, 49, now one of four centibillionaires in the world, has seen his fortune grow by $73.6 billion this year, a jump still smaller than Bezos’s, who is up by $87.1 billion.
Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth topped $100 billion earlier this month. On Wednesday alone, it rose by $8.5 billion.
