Who will be ‘world’s third richest person’ this year — Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, following a significant increase in his fortune since the start of this year, is eyeing Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s rank of the “world’s third richest person”.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s data showed that since January Zuckerberg’s fortune has increased by almost $54 million, touching $182 billion — which is $7 billion less than Musk.

Musk, 39, has not been richer since November 2020 as he derives most of his wealth from his 13% stake in Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Read more: How is Elon Musk different from Mark Zuckerberg?

According to Business Insider, Meta’s shares have surged 43% this year partly due to Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiently cost-cutting measures.”

On the contrary, Tesla's net worth has dropped by $40 million.

Investors' concerns about a global demand slowdown have led to a 29% drop for Tesla while Meta and other "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks have risen.

According to Seth Goldstein, an equity strategist, Tesla is "supposed to be a high-growth stock, and the short answer is that this year it looks like it won't be that high growth.

"When growth there is slowing, we tend to see a big reaction from the market."

Recently, LVMH chief Bernard Arnault and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have both overtaken Musk on the Bloomberg index this year.

Last year, Musk and Zuckerberg fueled their rivalry by scolding each other after Meta launched Threads as a potential competitor to X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought for around $44 billion in October 2022.

The two tech moguls even promised to settle their differences in a cage fight but it seems unlikely that will happen.