Elon Musk Just Became The World's Eighth Wealthiest Person
After some recent surges in Tesla's stock value, Elon Musk's net worth nearly doubled in value from what it was earlier this year. The CEO currently sits in eighth place on the list of wealthiest people.
Business Insider previously reported back in May that Musk's total fortune sat at a hearty $38.2 billion "despite never having taken a paycheck from Tesla."
That number is already jaw-dropping, but it looks like the 49-year-old's income is steadily growing every week.
According to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index as of July 15, Musk's total net worth now sits at $70.6 billion following a $43.0 billion year to date change.
To put that into perspective, he could give every person on earth $9 and still have leftover cash.
It's so impressive that late last week, CNN reported that Musk became temporarily richer than Warren Buffett. However, right now Bloomberg reports that Buffet sits on a $72.2 billion fortune, just $1.6 billion above the Tesla CEO.
In between the two business tycoons is computer scientist Larry Page with $71.7 billion.
CNN also claims that Musk is very well on track to become the wealthiest person in the world, even surpassing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who holds that title right now.
Bezos' worth according to Bloomberg is a hefty $179 billion so Musk is just over $100 billion shy.
Other names in the top five are Bill Gates with $117 billion, Bernard Arnault at $95.1 billion, Mark Zuckerberg with $91.2 billion, and Steve Ballmer at $74.9.
Musk's giant net worth comes from a variety of big and small business ventures that he started getting into when he was just 12-years-old, per Business Insider.
That includes selling source codes for a video game and then PCs and computer parts while studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
His very first internet start-up was created alongside his brother and called Zip2 Corporation, which eventually sold for $307 million, earning him a $22 million paycheque.
His second company was called X.com which eventually turned into PayPal, and after that came Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, aka SpaceX.
Shortly after SpaceX came Musk's most recent and notable project, Tesla Motors.
Hopefully, the dad of seven sets aside some of his earnings for baby food and diapers for his two-month-old son, X Æ A-XII, who he shares with Vancouver-born singer Grimes.