Tesla’s latest rally has blasted co-founder Elon Musk’s wealth past a new milestone: It now eclipses famed investor Warren Buffett’s fortune by a factor of three.
Musk’s net worth rose by US$24-billion to $335.1-billion (R5.2-trillion) on Monday as the electric car maker’s shares jumped 8.5% in New York. That widened his lead over Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person to $143-billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, ranks 10th with a net worth of $104.1-billion.
Up and down Tesla’s shareholder roster, fortunes are ballooning. Singapore-based retail trader Leo KoGuan emerged last week as the company’s third biggest individual shareholder, rocketing him up the wealth ranks with a net worth valued at $12.1-billion. Larry Ellison, who spent 44 years building software maker Oracle, has only been a big investor in Tesla since 2018, but his stake is now worth $18.1-billion, almost a quarter the value of his Oracle holding.
Buffett’s prodigious philanthropy helps explain some of the growing gap between his and Musk’s fortune. The value investor has donated a portion of his Berkshire stock every year to various charitable organisations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Buffett, 91, said in June that the value of his gifts over the past 16 years totalled $41-billion.
Musk, 50, weighed in on philanthropy over the weekend on Twitter, responding to a United Nations World Food Programme director who had challenged billionaires like Musk to step up to prevent starvation. Musk responded by saying he would sell Tesla stock worth $6-billion “right now” if the UN agency could outline how it would use the money to solve world hunger. — Reported by Scott Carpenter, (c) 2021 Bloomberg LP
