Elon Musk thinks it’s “strange” to be called the World’s Richest Man

News broke on Thursday, 7, of Tesla Inc. CEO, Elon Musk becoming the richest man in the world, surpassing Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.

On Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people, Musk is now worth $194.8 billion, after Tesla shares surged 7.9% yesterday. He is now $9.5 billion richer than Bezos.

Reacting to the news after a Twitter account called ‘Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley’ shared it, Musk succinctly replied “How strange” and added, “Well, back to work …”

How strange

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

Well, back to work …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

It’s understandably an outlandish statement that Musk is the ‘world’s richest man’, considering the failures and backlash he received when Tesla newly launched the electric car innovation. He was criticized by many experts in the auto industry who described the electric car idea as a failure on arrival.

The negative expert opinions were seemingly validated in 2008 when Tesla ran out of funds and was on the verge of collapse amid the production of its Model S. To sustain the company, Musk had to go bankrupt and funded Tesla with his personal wealth, and part of it was from what he earned from the sale of Paypal ($35 million).

By 2010, Musk was officially broke. He survived on personal loans from friends. Shortly afterward, Tesla became profitable, and to sustain this profitability, Musk, and his team must put unhealthy amount of hours into work – that was exactly what they did. The Tesla team resorted to sleeping on the factory floor just to make sure the company scaled.

Fast forward to 2021, Tesla is accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy with electric cars, and the innovation has rattled global automakers when it became clear that the future of automobile is electric. Many of them are now in a race to making the most valued electric cars. Even some European countries are now preparing to phase out petrol and diesel-powered vehicles by 2030 and usher in fully electric-powered cars.