Oct. 2 (UPI) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth reached $500 billion Wednesday, making him the first person to be worth half a trillion dollars.
Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list ranks him at No. 1, followed by Larry Ellison of Oracle, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
Musk had a net worth of $499.1 billion at close of trading Wednesday. It spiked higher earlier in the day, when he hit $500 billion.
On Sept. 10, Larry Ellison surpassed Musk for a short time when Oracle’s stock soared, but that didn’t last.
Tesla stock, along with Musk’s other companies, has soared. Tesla is at an all-time peak.
Tesla shares surged in mid-September after Musk invested about $1 billion through a trust, the largest he’s made. It made share prices jump by $30 in one day in the NASDAQ market.
In September, the Tesla board offered Musk a pay package worth nearly $1 trillion, but it will still need to be approved.
Each of the 96 million shares he would get in the deal trades at just over $300. Musk would have to pay $23.34 for each of those shares, equal to the amount he was expected to pay when he was first awarded his 2018 compensation package, which is tied up in litigation.