New moral obscenity just dropped. Elon Musk is set to pass Mark Zuckerberg on the list of richest people on Earth.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder is expected to see his net worth grow rapidly, following his spacefaring company's successful manned rocket launch and the announcement that his automaker Tesla would trade on the S&P 500. According to Fortune, Tesla stock rose by 15 percent following the news, trading at just over $408 per share. Ahead of the markets opening on Tuesday, the share price rose to $460. Given the amount of shares Musk owns, this adds nearly $12 billion to his overall net worth. That's good for a grand total of $114 billion, a bit ahead of Zuckerberg at $107 billion.
Only two other people on Earth have accumulated more wealth than Musk: Microsoft mastermind Bill Gates and Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos. Gates is worth $129 billion and Bezos is worth $184 billion. The wealth of the world's billionaires has skyrocketed during the global pandemic, up by 27 percent overall. Elon Musk has had the best year, as far as the quantitative part of things goes. He's seen his wealth grow by $90 billion in 2020, the largest leap for anyone in the world's 500 richest people.
On the more personal side of things, the anti-shutdown CEO recently announced that he had contracted COVID-19. Over the weekend, he shared that he has a "moderate case" of the disease but followed up to say he was experiencing no symptoms of the virus.
