Vikrant Shekhawat : Oct 30, 2021, 06:23 PM
New York: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has achieved yet another feat. The entrepreneur that loves making headlines and taking digs at rival firms has become the first person to be worth over $300 billion after his fortune surged by $10 billion in a day thanks to a Tesla share spike. According to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, Musk’s net worth hit $302 billion as of Thursday. His wealth increased by $10 billion on Thursday after Tesla inked a huge deal with Hertz for the rental giant to buy 100,000 of its vehicles.The deal has made Musk much richer than any human existing on earth. For instance, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is the second richest person in the world is at least $100 billion behind Tesla’s swanky boss. The e-tailer’s founder’s wealth currently stands at about $199 billion.With his wealth pegged at more than $300 billion, Musk is now worth more than the annual GDP of nations like Egypt, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece, Qatar and Finland.Besides Musk’s wealth growing, the recent few hours also witnessed a dramatic change in stock markets, as far as the tech companies are concerned. On Friday (October 30), Apple lost the crown of being the most valuable company by market capitalisation to Microsoft after the latter’s market jumped to $2.46 trillion. Apple is currently valued at about $2.41 billion after the iPhone maker’s stock plunged by about four per cent on Friday. The company’s stock nosedived after Apple reported lower than expected fourth-quarter revenues.At the same time, Microsoft jumped 1.1 per cent to blow past Apple after higher than expected revenue estimates for an 11th straight quarter. Microsoft became more valuable than Apple for the first time since early 2020. Microsoft has posted its biggest weekly gains since January 2021.