The largest shareholder of Tesla, Elon Musk, whose fortune is estimated at $ 219 billion, became the richest man in the world according to Forbes.

The businessman became the richest man in the world for the first time - in last year's ranking, he was on the second line with $ 151 billion. Over the past 12 months, Musk grew rich by $ 68 billion. This allowed him to surpass his closest competitor - founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, whose fortune is estimated at $ 171 billion, which is $6 billion less than a year ago.

Musk's main assets are stocks in the electric-car maker Tesla, which he owns 172.6 million shares, or 17% of the company, and almost 44% of the space company SpaceX. According to the businessman, he will pay more than $11 billion in taxes in 2021 and become the largest private taxpayer in the US.

Musk launched his first business in 1995, founding Zip2 company with his brother, which produced software that allowed news publications to post content on the Internet and offer their customers additional paid services. In 1999 this startup was bought by Compaq for $304 million. Musk, who had a 7% stake in Zip2, received $22 million.

That same year the businessman co-founded X.com, later known as PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. At the time of the sale Musk owned 11.7% of the company, which allowed him to get $165 million, writes Forbes.

In the same year Musk founded the company SpaceX, and another year later was created by Tesla Motors. In December 2008, NASA signed a contract with SpaceX worth $ 1.6 billion, and Tesla in the same year released the first car for sale - Tesla Roadster.

For the first time in the Forbes list Elon Musk was in 2012. Then he ranked 190th with a fortune of $2.4 billion. In 2019, Tesla became the largest electric car manufacturer in the world, in October 2021, its capitalization exceeded $1 trillion for the first time.