Elon Musk close to surpassing Jeff Bezos as world’s richest person

Musk, 49, has benefited from Tesla’s stratospheric rise in more than one way and could very soon be richer than Bezos. — AFP

Elon Musk, the outspoken entrepreneur behind Tesla Inc and SpaceX, kicked off the new year by homing in on a characteristically audacious title: the richest person on the planet.

A 2.8% rally in the electric carmaker’s share price on Jan 6 boosted Musk to within US$3bil (RM12.10bil) of Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, who currently occupies the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.