Elon Musk is now America’s richest man with an estimated wealth of $251bn, according to Forbes Magazine.
Mr Musk, 51, topped the Forbes 400 for the first time largely due to the soaring value of Tesla stock, in the process unseating rival Jeff Bezos, 58, whose fortune fell to $151bn as post-pandemic financial currents saw Amazon’s share price plummet.
“Despite all the turmoil in both his professional and personal lives, Musk is an estimated $60.5 bn richer this year thanks to an 11 per cent jump in Tesla stock and fresh new rounds of funding for SpaceX,” Forbes wrote in a release.
The rise in Mr Musk’s net wealth came amid his flailing efforts to purchase and then sue Twitter, and the revealation that he fathered twins with an employee at SpaceX around the same time his former partner Grimes gave birth to their second child.
Mr Bezos, who the Tesla founder has frequently feuded with, saw his wealth fall by $50bn after shares in Amazon fell by 27 per cent, according to the magazine.
Mr Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon last July to focus on his space exploration company Blue Origin.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, 66, also saw his wealth fall by $28bn to $106bn, but still clung to third spot on the 41st edition of the Forbes 400.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($101bn) and Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffet ($97bn) rounded out the top five.
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg fell out of the top 10 wealthiest individuals in the US for the first time since 2015.
His personal fortune fell by $77bn to $57.7bn in the wake of parent company Meta’s stock price cratering by 57 per cent.
For the first time since the Great Recession of 2008, the total wealth of the wealthiest 400 individuals in the United States fell by $500bn to $4 trillion, according to Forbes. And the entry point to make it on to the wealthiest 400 Americans dropped to $2.7bn, down from $2.9bn last year.
“The rich don’t always get richer,” Forbes deputy wealth editor Chase Peterson-Withorn said in a statement. “Like many Americans, the wealthiest 400 people in the country are feeling the stock market slowdown.”
The Forbes 400 list also scores billionaires on their philanthropic endeavours, and found more than a third had given away less than one per cent of their wealth.
Mr Musk didn’t immediately react to the news, instead tweeting several posts about Nasa’s successful mission to redirect an asteroid by smashing a spacecraft into it.
