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Elon Musk: “Space Karen” set to become the world’s third-richest person

The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is on track to become the world’s third-richest person. But after a slew of controversial comments, he’s no longer the internet’s sweetheart.

Tesla stock jumped by 13% after it was selected to join the S&P 500 index, and that was good news for a certain Mr Musk, who owns 20% of the company’s shares – in one fell swoop his estimated fortune rose by $15bn, bringing it to the tidy sum of $117.5bn (according to The Guardian).

In the company of the stratospherically rich, this pulls him ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, still leaves him eating the dust of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and trailing far behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (whose immense fortune is estimated to be worth $185bn).

Image Credit: Bloomberg

Will all that money make Musk happy? Well… probably, yes. But as his money, and influence, grows, will the rest of us be happy too? That’s more debatable.

Just earlier this week, Musk irresponsibly cast doubt on the veracity of Covid tests to his 40.1 million Twitter followers – probably not the best idea given that the US currently tops all other nations for having the highest number of deaths attributed to Covid-19. Which is why I’m hanging the following tweet on my wall.

So it was satisfying to see him swiftly taken down a peg or two when he was dubbed “Space Karen” by Twitter user Emma Bell, who also explained the intricacies of the test which Musk had disputed.

However, in better news for Musk and hopefully for humanity in general, SpaceX launched a NASA mission to the International Space Station. It was an awesome demonstration of what the company is capable of – we just wish its CEO spent more time on that, or counting his billions of dollars, and less on Twitter with his brain in the backseat.

 

 

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