In the race to be the richest person, Jeff Bezos passes Elon Musk

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has passed the net worth of Elon Musk to become the world's richest person, according to Forbes. As of Feb 16, Jeff Bezos is reportedly worth $190.3 billion while Elon Musk stands at $173.4 billion. The third position goes to French luxury brand owner Bernard Arnault is ranked third with $157.9 billion. Bill Gates ranks fourth, with $123.9 billion, followed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in fifth with just over $100 billion.

Jeff Bezos had held the title for more than three years. Only last month Elon Musk had become the richest person alive as Tesla shares soared to an all-time high. In September 2020, Musk surpassed Zuckerberg on Forbes' billionaire list. Musk slipped to number two as Tesla shares slid 2.4% on Tuesday. This caused Musk to lose $4.6 billion in assets.

For six week, Musk was the richest person alive, according to Forbes. Not because of his new title, but within these six weeks, he brought the market to an all-time high by sending the shares up of Etsy, Shopify, CD Projekt SA and Signal. He even intervened in the bitcoin market (Bitcoin blew past $50,000 today) (Tesla have previously revealed that it will hold $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet). Musk also invested in Dogecoin for his son and then upturned the market with his boosterish tweets.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos announced in January that he would be handing over the reins of the company to Andy Jassy, the current head of Amazon Web Services, later this year. Bezos will remain executive chairman of the tech giant. Amazon sales have been skyrocketing due to COVID-19. Due to the pandemic, consumers are increasingly becoming reliant on buying online while staying home. For the fourth quarter of 2020, net sales jumped 44% to $125.6 billion.