By: JV Staff
On Monday July 20th, Elon Musk, the CEO and product architect of Tesla Inc, added $5 billion to his net worth. This significant gain was led by Tesla’s continuous stock rally, and as a consequence the billionaire CEO found himself rising in the global list of the richest people. The 49-year-old technology entrepreneur, engineer and philanthropist ended the day with a net worth of $74.2 billion, branding him the fifth-richest person in the world.
As reported by the NY Post, only a few weeks ago Musk was ranked number 20 in the world’s richest list, compiled by Forbes. Now Musk stands behind only Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Bernard Arnault, who is the CEO of luxury goods giant LVMH, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Tesla Inc’s stocks have been soaring in anticipation of the electric automaker’s positive upcoming earnings report. The company was up 9.5 percent, ending Monday off at an all-time high of $1,643 per share. The stock’s uptick left Tesla’s market cap to end the day at $305.6 billion, which is close to $100 billion ahead of Toyota, the world’s second-largest automaker by market cap.
Tesla’s awaited quarterly earnings report will be released early Wednesday evening. If the expected profit report does end up satisfactory, it will mean the company will have four consecutive profitable quarters, making it eligible to being added to the popular S&P 500 stock index.
Tesla Motors was formed in 2003, and hired Musk a year later. Tesla Inc. now also includes the subsidiary SolarCity, a solar energy services company co-founded by Musk. Musk is also the founder, CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company. He also created OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that works to promote friendly artificial intelligence. Musk has also co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces. In 2016, Musk added to his portfolio founding The Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company dedicated to making tunnels optimized for electric cars.
Musk also keeps busy with philanthropic goals. He is chairman of the Musk Foundation, which aims among other things to provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas. Aside from other generous donations, Musk is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation, which aims to encourage technological advancement around the globe via public competitions. In 2015, he also become a signatory of The Giving Pledge, which signifies that, along with other generous philanthropists around the world, Musk has pledged to donate more than half of all his wealth to charities.
