Elon Musk has officially become the second richest man in the world, next to Amazon founder Jeff Bezo, and surpassing Microsoft Corporation founder Bill Gates — thanks to Tesla’s skyrocketing share prices this year, which have made the South African-born entrepreneur to increase wealth to unimaginable heights of $147 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bloomberg reported that the Tesla CEO has added more than $100 billion to his net worth in 2020, soaring him from the 35th spot of being the richest man, to number 2.

According to the repost, most of Musk's wealth is because of Tesla stock. And instead of receiving a salary, he has been compensated in stock based on the company's performance — a decision that has utterly paid off for him so far.  As to date, Musk has received four of the 12 bonuses negotiated in his executive compensation package.

After some production challenges and happenstances, Tesla has immensely scaled up its production of electric cars this year, which have been proven popular — as the Model 3 is the bestselling luxury car in America, according to Bloomberg. Wall Street in New York City is feeling “optimistic” about the future of electric vehicles and clean energy as companies including Tesla and governments around the world propose increasingly meaningful actions in response to climate change.

As of December 9, Musk is currently one of only five centibillionaires in the world —  or someone with a personal fortune exceeding $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including Jeff Bezos with $182 billion, Bill Gates $129 billion, LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton CEO Bernard Arnault with $110 billion, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with $105 billion.

According to Bloomberg, Gates would likely placed higher if he had not donated over $27 billion of his wealth to the Gates Foundation since 2006. More importantly, it mentioned that only the second time in the index’s eight-year history that the Microsoft co-founder has ranked lower than number two.

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk, born on June 28, 1971, is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded worldwide online payments system ‘X.com’ (which is now PayPal) in 1999, ‘SpaceX’  (an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company) in 2002 and ‘Tesla Motors’ in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its ‘Falcon 9’ rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station.