Elon Musk is the second richest man in the world

2020 may be turning out to be a terrible year for many but Elon Musk seems to be on a roll. The Tesla CEO has added close to $100 billion to his wealth in 2020 and is now the second richest person in the world. According to Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, Musk’s estimated net worth is now $128 billion, just a shade more than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

At the start of the year Musk was ranked 35th amongst the world’s richest. However, Tesla’s market value has gone through the roof this year, which in turn has resulted in Musk’s net worth going up.

While Musk’s worth has certainly gone up, this is the second time, as per Bloomberg, that Gates has dropped below number two. Gates was the richest man for four years running till 2017 when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos overtook him. Bezos continues to be the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $182 billion.

As Musk, it is rather well known that he doesn’t take a single penny in salary. Musk has an incentive-based compensation structure where he gets paid when Tesla or his other company SpaceX hit certain financial milestones.

A report by Fortune had earlier calculated what targets Musk needs to meet in order to land huge windfalls. Musk, according to Fortune, has a 12-level compensation metric and needs to first increase Tesla’s cap to $100 billion — something that has been achieved in 2020.

In the last eight years, Tesla and Musk seem to have come a long way. In 2012, Tesla’s market value was around ‘just’ $4 billion. Tesla’ stock value has gone up dramatically in 2020. In the first two weeks of 2020, it had gone up by close to 25%.
It estimated that Tesla’s market value will touch $500 billion soon.