With wealth approaching the entire gross domestic product of Hungary, Elon Musk has become the second-richest person alive, bumping Bill Gates down to No. 3.
Year to date, the Telsa founder and CEO’s wealth has grown by more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, surging his net worth to $128 billion. That surge propelled Musk from the 35th-richest person to the No. 2 spot.
At the same time, roughly 10 million people in the United States remain unemployed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The record-setting growth is the result of a number of successes this year, from launching NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX rockets to announcing the new Cybertruck Gigafactory in Texas — and most recently, the announcement that Tesla stock would be admitted to the S&P 500 index, according to CNBC. Musk’s net worth grew by more than $7 billion on Monday alone.
The billionaire shake-up marks the first time in the index’s eight-year history that Gates hasn’t been ranked among the top two wealthiest people in the world. Since 2006, Gates has given more than $27 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The only person with more accumulated wealth than Musk is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. With a net worth of more than $182 billion, Bezos’s personal wealth is larger than the GDP of Algeria, the 53rd-wealthiest nation of 189 listed by Worldometer.
Collectively, the billionaires from across the world on the Bloomberg index have added $1.3 trillion to their wealth this year.
In contrast, more than 20 million people in the U.S. are receiving unemployment benefits and funds from the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for gig workers who can’t normally access unemployment benefits as the latest surge in coronavirus cases roils the country and prompts new lockdown restrictions.
