Mr. Musk's wealth is more than double that of Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, according to the Bloomberg index. Establishing the exact net worth of the world's wealthiest can be tricky, in part because many of their holdings are private.
Mr. Musk's individual wealth is currently higher than the market values of all but 21 of the companies in the S&P 500, according to Dow Jones Market Data as of Wednesday morning.
As Mr. Musk's net worth has risen, he has also been critical of the proposed new capital-gains tax in President Biden's social-spending and climate-change legislation. The plan would represent a tax on billionaires' unrealized gains, meaning they would be taxed on the rising value of assets regardless of whether they were sold or not. This would effectively eliminate billionaires' ability to defer capital-gains taxes indefinitely.
"Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you," Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter earlier this week, responding to another Twitter user suggesting that any new unrealized capital-gains taxes will eventually hurt middle class retirement investments.
Proponents say the proposal, if implemented, would likely generate a large chunk of revenue from the wealthiest taxpayers, many of whom currently can keep their reported income and tax bills low. "The Billionaires Income Tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D., Ore.). "No working person in America thinks it's right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don't."
The climb in Mr. Musk's net worth comes after Tesla's market capitalization on Monday topped $1 trillion for the first time. Car-rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said it ordered 100,000 of Tesla's electric vehicles, prompting Tesla shares to jump 13% that day.
Tesla is one of five U.S. companies currently with a market value of more than $1 trillion, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
In addition to Tesla, Mr. Musk is co-founder and chief executive of privately held space-exploration company SpaceX, which last month launched four civilians into space. SpaceX had a valuation close to $100 billion earlier this year.
SpaceX and Mr. Musk both own bitcoin, he has said.
Additionally, Mr. Musk runs Boring Co., which seeks to build high-speed, underground transportation.
He previously co-founded the online-payments company that later became PayPal. Online marketplace eBay Inc. bought PayPal for $1.4 billion, and Mr. Musk made over $100 million from the deal.
Mr. Musk's recent rise in net worth is notable because he accumulated $117 billion of it this year alone, according to Bloomberg's index. The net worth of Mr. Bezos, meanwhile, has climbed by $5.2 billion since the beginning of the year.
Both Amazon and Tesla didn't immediately respond to emails seeking comments from Messrs. Bezos and Musk.
Mr. Musk's net worth overtook that of Mr. Bezos in early January of this year, when the value of Tesla's shares had gained almost 8% in one day.
Earlier this month, Mr. Musk prodded Mr. Bezos over the Amazon founder's No. 2 ranking, when he responded to a tweet by Mr. Bezos with an emoji of a silver medal showing the number two. Mr. Bezos' tweet referenced an old article about Amazon doubting the company's business model.
Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com
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Appeared in the October 28, 2021, print edition.
