By Johannes Petry, IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the SCRIPTS Centre of Excellence, Free University of Berlin, Jan Fichtner, Senior Research Fellow at the CORPNET project, University of Amsterdam, and Eelke Heemskerk, Principal Investigator at the CORPNET project, University of Amsterdam. Guest post at Notes on the Crisis.
Over the course of 2020, Elon Musk’s wealth skyrocketed from $27.7 billion to $147 billion. Musk even overtook Bill Gates, to become the second richest person in the world. This was a tremendous jump in fortune: Musk was only at 36th place in January 2020. Musk’s enrichment was mainly due to Tesla’s rising stock price (TSLA:US), which surged from $86 in January to $650 in December. Tesla is currently one of the ten most valuable companies in the US stock market.