Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is back as the world's richest man alive as he reclaimed the position from Tesla's Elon Musk. As per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos is worth $191 billion while Musk, who has the superpower to catapult lesser known companies to the limelight with a single tweet, is closely behind at $190 billion.
The tables turned as Tesla's shares slid 2.4 per cent on Tuesday, erasing $4.6 billion from its chief executive officer’s fortune and knocking him from the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking.
Musk unseated Bezos, who’d held the numero uno position for more than three years, in the first week of January. Interestingly, his ascension to the top of the list saw Musk front and centre in some of the biggest market events so far this year. He fanned the flames of the Reddit-driven GameStop rally and sent the shares of Etsy, Shopify, CD Projekt SA and Signal Advance soaring with boosterish tweets.
Recently he’s roiled the price of Bitcoin and even Dogecoin, a lesser-known cryptocurrency that Musk spiked with a tweeted meme earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Bezos stepped down as the chief executive officer of the online retailer he founded almost three decades ago "to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives". Bezos said he will focuse on projects like the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post.
Musk’s SpaceX, a rival to Bezos’s Blue Origin, has been in talks to raise funds that would significantly increase its valuation. SpaceX completed the $850 million funding round last week at a $74 billion valuation, about 60 per cent higher than its prior round, according to CNBC, which cited people familiar with the matter.
