Jeff Bezos has overtaken Elon Musk as the world’s richest person, reclaiming his title and ending Musk’s short-lived reign with the title.
Musk, who surged to the top of the list in January after Tesla’s (TSLA) stock was booming, was knocked back into second place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index list as of Feb. 16. Musk lost around $4.5 billion as Tesla lost about 2.4% of their shares, CNN Business reported.
Jeff Bezos has reclaimed his title of world’s richest person, ending Elon Musk’s roughly six-week reign atop the list. https://t.co/jadvQkaYco
— CNN (@CNN) February 17, 2021
In 2020, the 170 million shares of Telsa that Musk previously owned increased in value by $106 billion as stock market shares rose by 743%.
In addition, in Jan. 2021, Musk tweeted out a popular link to a Reddit page, which was generating excitement over GameStop (GME) stocks. Musk appeared to be cheering on Reddit users who were purchasing numerous GameStop stocks over Wall Street brokers.
This ultimately ended up causing GameStop shares to soar through the roof and then plummet following Robinhood’s decision to stop trading on certain stocks such as GameStop and AMC.
Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021
Bezos, who saw a $75 billion increase in his Amazon shares due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in online sales, also lost money as the stock market fell, losing around $372 million.
Earlier this month, Bezos announced that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO with Amazon at the end of the third financial quarter in order to transition into a role as executive chair later in the year. (RELATED: Amazon To Get New CEO, Jeff Bezos To Transition Into Executive Chair Role)
In third place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of Tuesday is Bill Gates, who has a net worth of around $137 billion.