Elon Musk
Elon Musk on August 13, 2021 at a press event on the grounds of the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin.
Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images
  • Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now worth $335 billion after Tesla's stock rose another 8.5% on Monday.
  • That makes him three times richer than Warren Buffet and worth more than the GDP of South Africa, his home country.
  • Tesla's stock has risen 65.6% since the start of the year.

Elon Musk is now worth three times more than investing wizard Warren Buffet, just days after the Tesla CEO became the world's first person to hit $300 billion in wealth.

The tech mogul's fortune is now $335 billion, after it jumped by another $24 billion on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In comparison, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Buffet is worth $104 billion.

Musk, 50, is also worth more than the entire gross domestic product of his home country, South Africa, which hauled in $301.9 billion last year, per data from the World Bank.

His recent boost in wealth was driven by an 8.5% rise in Tesla's shares, Bloomberg first reported, as his net worth soared by a total $165 billion in 2021. The multibillionaire owned about 22.4% of the company at the start of the year.

Last week, a 13% leap in Tesla's stock netted Musk an additional $36 billion – the largest single-day surge Bloomberg has ever recorded – after news emerged that Hertz ordered 100,000 Teslas.

Musk now sits at a comfortable $142 billion above the world's second richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who according to Bloomberg's index is worth $193 billion.

Tesla's stock has skyrocketed 65.6% since the start of the year, despite dips in March and May.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted he would sell his shares in the electric automaker and spend $6 billion to alleviate world hunger, as long as the World Food Programme could prove that the money would solve the global hunger crisis.

Read the original article on Business Insider