Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, follows Musk with a net worth of $ 191.6 billion ($ 260.7 billion). Musk tweeted a second-place medal at Bezos early today.

Thanks to both Musk’s Tesla shares and his majority stake in the privately owned SpaceX, where he serves as CEO, Musk has accumulated enormous wealth.

Musk gained $ 8.6 billion ($ 11.7 billion) since Friday’s close and more than $ 52 billion ($ 70.7 billion) years to date, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index says.

Tesla shares are also climbing as they recover after a rocky year. They are up 13 percent year-to-date, far less than the gain of 743 percent in 2020. Still, it is a big improvement from when they fell 22 percent for the year in May.

Musk received $ 0 in salary in 2020, according to one company, but he received stock options during the year that are now worth $ 22 billion ($ 29.9 billion). And these opportunities are far more valuable because of the rise in the stock price.

Musk and Bezos – the two richest men on earth – are involved in a billionaire spaceflight. Even before launching the first tourism mission into space on Inspiration4 in September, Musk’s SpaceX won massive NASA and US military contracts and flew the most powerful rocket into operation.

Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, and billionaire Virgin brands owner Richard Branson, both traveled to space last summer.

Meanwhile, the US economy is still recovering from the Covid-19 recession. The median household income fell 2.9 percent in 2020 to $ 67,521 ($ 91,902), the first statistically significant decline since 2011.

September’s job report marked the second month in a row that the economy added far fewer jobs than expected.