Elon Musk, who created the electric car company Tesla and the aerospace company SpaceX, in July 2020 for the first time entered the top five richest people in the world.
Less than a year later, he topped the world rankings of billionaires, and now the Tesla and SpaceX CEO not only remains the richest man in the world, but is worth as much as his famous compatriots, billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index online, which calculates the net worth of the wealthy. Musk's wealth reached $236 billion, while global software guru Bill Gates, who is in fourth place, has $130 billion and stock market tycoon Warren Buffett, who is in 10th place, has $103 billion. Both Gates and Buffett - each in their own time - were at the top of the list of the world's richest, and remain leaders in their respective markets. Musk passed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in January 2021 to become the richest man in the world with a fortune of $185 billion. Musk owns stock in Tesla and SpaceX. That's what propelled him to the top of the rich, thanks to Tesla's tenfold increase in shareholder value and SpaceX's high valuation in the last year.
Bezos, who was recently trolled by Musk when the Tesla executive tweeted him a silver medal smiley face, is still second on the list of wealthiest with a net worth of $191 billion. Gates and Buffett would be much closer to Musk in the wealth rankings if it weren't for charitable donations. Gates and Buffett have donated tens of billions of dollars to charity in recent years, while Musk has been criticized for being stingy, according to CNBC. Musk makes excuses and says he prefers to remain anonymous when he gives money to charity. This year, Musk has pledged to give away $150 million, including a $100 million prize in a contest to develop technology to capture CO2 from the environment, a figure Recode estimates is higher than all his previous charitable donations. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's richest people based on a tally of billionaires' net worth.
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