The tussle between Musk and Bezos is never-ending, but who’s the richest man now?
The year 2021 has seen a lot of fluctuations in the billionaire list. This was mainly due to the pandemic which has affected numerous economies and businesses. The most interesting has been the tussle between two of the richest men in the world- Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Recently, the combined wealth of both has touched the half a trillion mark. One trillion dollars is a million billion dollars!!! Let us find out who is the richest man now?
Who are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos?
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is the real-life Tony Stark. He is known for his aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, SpaceX, and the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Inc. He is also the founder of many companies including PayPal, The Boring Company, and OpenAI. Musk has been a member of the Forbes Richest list since the year 2012 when eBay acquired PayPal for $165 million. As of now, his net worth is $272 billion.
In the year 2018, Musk was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Musk has been in the spotlight of the media for a long time. Recently, he’s been in the limelight for his extremely interesting twitter and his extremely bizzare choice of a name for his son. Musk is a father to seven children with the youngest born amid the pandemic in May 2020. He had his son with the Canadian singer, Grimes and had decided to name him X Æ A-12. He could not do so as the characters 12 and Æ are not English characters, so they decided to name the baby X AE A-XII Musk.
Musk has also been promoting the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and has talked extensively about it. This has led to him getting labelled as a market manipulator as the price of Dogecoin frequently experiences price movements shortly after tweets from him. Since cryptocurrency is not regulated by the stock market, his actions are not illegal.
Jeff Bezos
Like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos is also a self-made man. He is best known for his eCommerce company Amazon which is the largest online sales company. Amazon is also the largest company by revenue. Bezos is an engineer and an ex -employee of Wall Street. Bezos also founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin which is the competitor of Musk’s SpaceX.
In the year 1999, Bezos was named ‘ the person of the year’ by Time magazine. Bezos has ventured in many areas of businesses including space and biotechnology. In 2021, Bezos along with his brother, Mark Bezos, flew to space. The suborbital flight lasted over 10 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107.0 km).
The both of them have been competing to stay in top of the billionaires lists for so many years. Since Bezos recently stepped down as the CEO of Amazon, his net worth has been reduced to $197 billion whereas, Musk’s net worth has reached upto a smashing $274 billion yesterday.
The Twitter feud between these two is also hilarious.
Jeff Bezos tweets 'don't let anyone tell you who you are' and Elon Musk responds with a second place medal https://t.co/fk8NGZhaDX via @entrepreneur #entrepreneur #socialmedia pic.twitter.com/6UddrxkFvG
— Real Marsha Wright® (@marshawright) October 11, 2021
Apart from Bezos and Musk, who made the World’s Richest list?
Since Musk and Bezos acquire and keep interchanging the first and second position of the World’s Richest list, here are the people who fill the rest of the list.
Bernard Arnault
The third position is acquired by Bernard Arnault and family. The business tycoon oversees 70 brands which includes Louis Vuitton and Sephora. In January 2021, his brand LVMH also acquired Tiffany & co. in what is said to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever. Arnault began his legacy in 1985 when he bought Christian Dior for $15 million.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates is a name that everybody knows. From young to old, all know him and his contribution to the world. Gates founded Microsoft in 1975. He is an investor in many companies, which includes Canadian Railways and AutoNation, and he is one of the largest landowners in the United States. Post his divorce, Gates has transferred around $5.7 billion worth of shares to his ex wife Melinda Gates.
Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison is the chairman and CTO of the company Oracle. He was also the CEO of the company for 37 years, however he stepped down in the year 2014. Ellison owns upto 35% of the shares of the software giant Oracle. In 2012, Ellison bought almost all of the land of the Hawaiian Island Lanai for an approx $300 million and moved there permanently in 2020.
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Larry Page
We all have encountered this name in our GK books. Yes, he is the founder of our most beloved Google. He founded Google in 1998 while in Stanford pursuing a PhD. Page has approximately a net worth of $120.7 billion.
Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin along with Larry Page co-founded Google. Brin was also the CEO of the parent company of Google, Alphabet l, till he stepped down in the year 2019. Brin has a net worth of $115.2 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg
The CEO and the founder of the largest social media platform Mark Zuckerberg is the eighth of the richest people in the world. In 2007, he became the youngest self-made billionaire and has been increasing his wealth ever since. Forbes lists his net worth as $111 billion.
Warren Buffett
The most successful investor of all times, Warren Buffett is known as the ‘Oracle of Omaha’. He runs the multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway which owns around 60 companies. Buffett started very young when he first bought shares at the age of 11 and filed taxes at the age of 13.
