Who Has a Higher Net Worth: Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?
There was a time when people thought about Amazon, Jeff Bezos would come to mind. And when they thought about Tesla, Elon Musk would. Nowadays, you might just think of them as two of the richest men on the planet. But how rich are they?
Here’s the answer to which billionaire has the higher net worth. Plus, who the “richest person in the world” is today (it’s not Musk or Bezos).
Elon Musk’s net worth
Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.
In 1992, he moved to America and attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Musk earned two degrees from the Ivy League school — a Bachelor of Arts in physics and a Bachelor of Science in economics.
His first company was Zip2 Corporation, which has been described as an “Internet version of the Yellow Pages” with maps to help users find local businesses. In 1999, Musk sold Zip2 for a little more than $300 million. The same year, he co-founded X.com (not to be confused with the social media platform formally known as Twitter), an online financial services company. In 2002 X.com, which had merged with Confinity to form PayPal, was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. That meant Musk, who was PayPal’s largest shareholder, received $175.8 million.
He also founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in 2002. The following year, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla. Musk, Ian Wright, and J.B. Straubel were the company’s first employees and named co-founders. In 2022, Musk bought what was then known as Twitter for $44 billion including $33.5 billion in equity.
Musk’s estimated net worth is $189 billion as of this writing.
Jeff Bezos’ net worth
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on Jan. 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He is the former CEO and current chairman of the board of Amazon, which he founded in 1994.
The world’s largest e-commerce company was started by Bezos in a garage in Seattle. Some may remember that Amazon initially sold just books, but the online bookstore later began selling anything and everything you can find at other retailers around the world and offered the convenience of having those items delivered straight to your door. Amazon is expected to overtake Walmart as the largest retailer.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and purchased The Washington Post in 2013. He also owns stakes in Uber and Airbnb.
These days, Bezos has a higher net worth than Musk. According to Celebrity Net Worth, as of this writing Bezos’ estimated net worth is $204 billion.
Who is the richest person in the world now?
Bezos and Musk both held the status of richest person in the world for a time, but now those bragging rights belong to someone else.
The richest person in the world today is Bernard Arnault. For those who aren’t familiar with Arnault he is a French businessman and the chairman of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company.
As of this writing, Arnault has a staggering net worth of about $230 billion.
