Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos Battling It Out For The Prize Of World's Richest Person

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk woke up Thursday morning a few billion dollars short of becoming the richest person in the world. After Tesla's 5% gain in early trading, he actually surpassed Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos to officially become the world's richest person, according to CNBC.

What Happened: Musk owned 38.66 million shares of Tesla, according to a late 2020 regulatory filing. The stock's $40 per share gain means he's now worth more than $185 billion, good enough to outrank Bezos' net worth of around $184 billion.

However, it might be premature for Musk to break out the champagne -- assuming he was planning to celebrate in the first place.

According to Forbes' real-time billionaire's list, the Amazon chief is worth $186.4 billion after the stock's early morning move higher. The minor differences could be attributed to how each outlet calculates Musk and Bezos' holdings in private companies, such as Musk's SpaceX or Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post.

It's likely Bezos and Musk will switch places with each other for the title as the world's richest person for a little while. We may have a clear winner in the coming weeks or months if the two stocks move in opposite directions.

Well, back to work …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

How Musk Got Here: Musk entered 2020 worth $28 billion and closed the year valued at around $175 billion, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Tesla's stock skyrocketed nearly 800% in 2020 to close the year at over $700.

Investors that bought the stock near the March lows at $70.10 are sitting on a gain of more than 1,000%.

For anyone keeping track, Tesla's stock is up nearly 1,700% over a five-year period versus Amazon's 471% gain.

Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Tesla's stock at its (split-adjusted) IPO price of around $3.40 would be worth around $235,000 today.

However, a similar $1,000 investment in Amazon's split-adjusted IPO price of $1.50 in 1994 would have been sufficient for an investor to become a millionaire had they held the stock over the decades.