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Elon Musk overtakes Bill Gates to become world's second richest person

The Tesla boss is worth $128 billion, but Amazon's Jeff Bezos still holds the crown at $182 billion.

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Elon Musk is worth more than Bill Gates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk jumped past Bill Gates to become the second richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Musk is worth $128 billion, with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos still holding the top spot at $182 billion.

The index rounds each person's worth up to the nearest billion, so Musk is actually worth $127.9 billion compared to the Microsoft co-founder's $127.7 billion. Gates lost his spot partially as a result of his philanthropic effort -- he's given more than $27 billion to the Gates Foundation since 2006, Bloomberg noted.

Last week, Musk snatched the No. 3 spot from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (he was fourth in August). His rise comes after Tesla shares surged in the wake of news that the electric car company will be admitted to the S&P 500 index next month, CNBC reported Tuesday.

Tech billionaires make up seven of the Top 10 -- Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are worth $81.3 billion and $78.7 billion respectively, while former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has $76.1 billion.

See also: 2019 Tesla Model S Long Range (in-depth review)

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