Elon Musk, only billionaire worth over $200 billion
Elon Musk, only billionaire worth over $200 billion
Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, continues to be the world’s richest person and the only billionaire with a net worth exceeding $200 billion.
His net worth surpassed the net worth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos by $22 billion
With Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon posting a net worth of $192 billion, the South African-born billionaire has an estimated wealth valuation of $214 billion
Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer, announced today that the company plans to relocate its headquarters from Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, where it is building a massive car and battery complex, which is less exposed to tax obligations.
The company has moved its U.S. headquarters from California, which is home to relatively high taxes and living costs, to Texas, joining the likes of Oracle, HP, and Toyota Motor. Silicon Valley is known for new ideas and businesses, but Texas is often attributed with cheaper labour and fewer restrictions.
During the company’s annual meeting held at the Texas car factory, Musk announced that the company’s headquarters is moving to Austin, Texas.
As part of his plans to establish Tesla’s new plant in Texas and to launch SpaceX rockets from a launch site in Texas, Musk moved to Texas from California in December.
During a dispute over the closure of Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, due to COVID-19, the 50-year-old billionaire had earlier threatened to move Tesla headquarters and future programs to Texas.
He presented a cowboy-style belt buckle with a t-shaped T depicted in the Tesla logo that said, “Don’t Mess with T”, during the meeting. The phrase was inspired by a famous and venerable anti-littering campaign from Texas – Don’t Mess with Texas.
The tech billionaire owns about 20% of Tesla, according to a regulatory filing from August 2021. He uses part of the holdings to pay his debts. Several of his loans to American banks are about $500 million, according to a December 2020 filing.
The value of his current net worth is equivalent to 122 million troy ounces of gold or 2.59 billion barrels of crude oil.