Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is garnering attention amid forecasts that he could become the world’s first trillionaire next year.
However, analysts argue that Bill Gates, once the world’s wealthiest individual, could have beaten Musk to the trillion-dollar mark with twice the assets if he hadn’t followed advice from Warren Buffett, the legendary “Oracle of Omaha.”
On Thursday, Yahoo Finance reported an analysis by investor Michael Arouet. Given Microsoft’s current market cap of 3.6 trillion USD, Arouet estimates Gates’ wealth would have already exceeded 1.5 trillion USD.
Arouet’s analysis suggests that if Gates had ignored Buffett’s advice to divest his Microsoft shares and hadn’t established his charitable foundation with his ex-wife, he would have already claimed the title of world’s first trillionaire.
Arouet added that one cannot solely blame Buffett’s advice, as no one anticipated Microsoft’s significant stock price surge over the past decade.
Musk, the frontrunner to become the world’s first trillionaire next year, took to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, pointing out that Gates has lost over 10 billion USD by shorting Tesla stock over the past eight years.
As of Thursday, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index ranks Musk at the top with a net worth of 632 billion USD, while Gates sits at 17th place with 117 billion USD.
