South African-born business mogul Elon Musk has officially surpassed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to claim the title as the worlds third richest man. Musk’s net worth now sits an eye-watering $115 billion (almost R2 trillion), according to Bloomberg.

Musk was able to claim this title thanks to a huge 12% stock gain by his company Tesla on Monday [August 31] after Tesla’s 5-1 stock split. Each Tesla shareholder saw their number of shares held increase by a factor of 5, according to Electrek.

While a majority of Musk’s wealth comes from Tesla, he also has his other business ventures to thank for ranking this high on the list of the world’s riches people. These include SpaceX, The Boring Company, Hyperloop and OpenAI.

Surprisingly, Musk doesn’t actually receive an annual salary or any cash bonuses. Instead, the Tesla CEO gets paid in the form of millions of stock options worth billions of dollars.

According to CNN Business, he has already received two multi-billion dollar payouts as a reward for Tesla hitting certain profit margins and stock price thresholds. Musk currently owns more than 18% of the company’s shares, which is three times more than the next largest stockholder.

Picture: Twitter/@Complex

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