Time Magazine has anointed billionaire visionary, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, as its 2021 Person of the Year.
Accumulating riches at a rate that has never been seen before, Musk has recently pipped Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s wealthiest person. This recent achievement is owed to Tesla’s phenomenal stock market performance, which has propelled Musk’s net worth to the tune of $US300 billion ($A420.8 billion).
However, despite his new moniker as the world’s richest person, Time reported Musk irreverently claimed that the title probably excluded nation’s sovereigns.
He said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is likely richer than he is, “I can’t invade countries and stuff,” he remarked.
Musk has been on a mission to solve the globe’s most intractable challenges and on his quest has become the ultimate industry disruptor.
Already he’s in the process of radically changing the automobile, spaceflight, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, energy and infrastructure industries, to name a few.
While the sheer breadth of his endeavours is astonishing, his terrestrial Tesla triumph stands out for creating an unprecedented demand for clean energy transportation. Musk’s efforts have forced automakers around the world who were once vehemently against emissions restrictions to play catch up.
Though both literally and figuratively out of this world, Musk has also grown SpaceX into a global commercial leader in building and flying rockets and crews. Plans are already in place to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars, but also on the horizon, spacefaring rockets which will be reusable as aeroplanes.
Musk has achieved amazing things in 2021, however, Time emphasises that the annual acknowledgement is not an award, but rather, “recognition of the person who had the most influence of the events of the year, for good or for ill.”
Time also noted the sway Musk holds over any army of loyal followers (and investors) on social media, where he goes after the powerful and regulators attempting to shackle his lofty ambitions.
Before his 66 million Twitter followers, he offers outlandish assistance to the world and drives even his own followers and investors mad by roiling markets.
Though self-admittedly, Musk has said that half his tweets are “made on a porcelain throne.”
