[imagesource: Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images]

Being the world’s richest person brings with it plenty of media attention.

Seems like a small(ish) price to pay, mind you.

When you factor in that Elon Musk is also fond of strange tweets, strange child names, and the sort of dance moves usually seen at a braai populated with dads only, his life makes for tabloid fodder.

As of this morning, Musk is worth a cool $290 billion. He’s dipped below the $300 billion mark after losing almost $13 billion in the past 24 hours, but he still has a very comfortable buffer over his rival in second place, Jeff Bezos.

His net worth is now more than double that of legendary investor Warren Buffett. How does one compute just how much money that is? CNN, using a net worth of $300 billion for Musk, is here to help out:

Musk is also worth significantly more than the combined fortunes of former Microsoft (MSFT) CEOs Bill Gates ($136 billion) and Steve Ballmer ($100 billion.) Ditto for Google (GOOGL) co-founders Larry Page ($120 billion) and Sergey Brin ($115 billion.)

Is Musk a sports fan? He could buy all 32 National Football League teams (currently worth more than $112 billion, according to data site Sportico) and still have almost $190 billion left over.

Chelsea fans are probably wishing he had an interest in taking over from Roman Abramovich, although I’m sure whoever gets the green light to buy the English football club won’t be poor.

We have long since given up calling Musk South African, but this is a great stat:

Musk is worth only about $35 billion less than the gross domestic product of his native South Africa, whose GDP is $335 billion, according to the World Bank.

His net worth actually exceeds the GPDs of Colombia, Finland, Pakistan, Chile, and Portugal.

Musk reckons he isn’t the richest person on the planet, saying that honour belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he may well have a point.

But by the book, he is, and the past two years have seen a remarkable rise. This via Forbes:

When Forbes finalized its 2020 World’s Billionaires List on March 18, 2020, Tesla’s stock price stood at $72.24 per share. Musk ranked 31st in the world, with a net worth of $24.6 billion ($88.4 billion behind Bezos).

A year later, Musk trailed Bezos by only $26 billion after Tesla’s stock price increased more than eightfold, boosting Musk’s fortune by $126 billion–setting the record for the biggest one-year gain of any billionaire Forbes has ever tracked…

In late September 2021, as Tesla shares soared, Musk overtook Bezos to become the richest person in the world – and the third (after Bernard Arnault and Bezos) ever to be worth at least $200 billion.

A paltry $200 billion is now a blip in the rearview mirror.

He’s not done yet, either:

Musk has at least one more big payday coming soon. Of the 127.7 million Tesla options he’s been awarded in the last decade, 19.5 million remain unvested, worth $14.3 billion as of March 11 (not included in Forbes’ net worth estimate because they haven’t yet vested).

But all of those options could vest as soon as April, if the company achieves certain performance milestones.

One analysis predicts that Musk could become a trillionaire as soon as 2024.

The mind boggles.

So much power – how will he use it?

Oh hi lol

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2022

[sources:cnn&forbes]