49-year-old self-made billionaire, Elon Musk is once again, the world’s richest individual on earth.
Tesla chief’s wealth surged to $200 billion after the rocket company, SpaceX he founded completed another funding round, pushing him atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the second time in 2021.
He moved past, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, who is now worth $194 billion and had some days ago earlier reclaimed the title as the world’s richest person this week after Tesla shares plunged.
Recent reports suggest SpaceX raised another $850 million this month from a group of leading institutional investors led by Sequoia Capital.
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Such investment now puts SpaceX’s valuation at $74 billion, a 60% jump from August, and helped boost Musk’s net worth by about $11 billion, according to the index.
November 15, 2016, filing with the Federal Communications Commission revealed the tech billionaire owned 54% of SpaceX.
Although Bloomberg’s analysis assumes he hasn’t sold his shares in subsequent rounds and that his stake has been diluted to about 47% in proportion to the amount raised. The value is reduced by 15% to account for typical discounts that shares in unicorns attract on the secondary market, according to two brokers.
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- Elon Musk’s current wealth could easily buy 114 million troy ounces of gold or 3.20 billion barrels of crude oil (about 10% of Africa’s leading oil producer’s oil reserve).
- He currently leads the most valuable car company, Tesla, and also owns SpaceX, which counts the U.S NASA as its leading customer.
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Musk owns about 20% of Tesla, according to a February 2020 regulatory filing. Part of his holdings is used as collateral for personal obligations.