[imagesource: Wikimedia Commons]

It’s been a full year since Elon Musk overtook Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.

You may recall that this involved some social media sparring between the pair, culminating in genuinely embarrassing behaviour from both parties.

Standard multi-billionaire stuff, really.

Forbes released its list of America’s richest people this week and it was Elon, obviously, who came out on top:

He is No. 1 on The Forbes 400 for the first time this year, with an estimated net worth of $251 billion–$60.5 billion more than he had on last year’s ranking and $100 billion richer than Bezos. That’s also a record for No. 1 on The Forbes 400.

The real-time tracker shows that as of 11AM this morning, Musk’s net worth had crept up to $259,8 billion while Bezos’ was sitting at a paltry $137,8 billion.

Last year’s list was released just four days before Musk overtook Bezos so the 2022 version is the first in four years that the Amazon man doesn’t sit atop. It’s unlikely that he’ll climb up those ranks again:

Bezos was hurt by a decline in Amazon shares, which fell 27% and erased $50 billion of his fortune between the two lists (for the 2022 ranking, Forbes calculated net worths on September 2, 2022).

The only person on the list who had a worse 2022 was Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortune is being wiped out at a remarkable speed.

Musk’s huge spike in net worth is due in most part to Tesla:

He owns about 25% of the electric carmaker between stock and options, a stake that even after accounting for shares pledged as collateral was worth $176.3 billion as of September 2. The rest is mainly from rocket maker SpaceX, which quadrupled its valuation over the last three years to $127 billion…

Image: Forbes

And Musk has even more to taunt his space-race rival with: It took him half as long as Bezos to reach the top of The Forbes 400, despite having nearly twice as far to climb.

Bezos debuted on the list in 1998 and 20 years later pipped Bill Gates to the top spot. Musk, on the other hand, first appeared in 2012 at number 190 and a decade later rules the roost.

His net worth has actually topped $300 billion twice over the past 12 months and he remains the only person to breach that mark.

Musk has also weathered a number of controversies, such as accusations that he exposed himself to a flight attendant and offered to buy her a horse.

That seems like a good place to tap out.

[source:forbes]