Elon Musk's net worth quadruples since January to make him third richest person in the world

Tesla boss overtakes Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in billionaire rankings

SpaceX boss Elon Musk became the third richest person in the world after seeing his wealth quadruple in eight months (Getty Images)

Elon Musk has become the third richest person in the world after his wealth more than quadrupled to $115 billion (£85bn) since the start of the year.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss overtook Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Blillionaire’s Index, after seeing $11.7bn added to his personal fortune.

Only Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates rank above Musk on the index, with the combined wealth of the top four wealthiest men totalling more than half a trillion dollars.

All four of the US tech tycoons have seen their fortunes surge during the coronavirus pandemic, as share prices in the companies have bucked market trends to rise considerably.

Counting Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, US technology billionaires now make up seven of the top 10 richest people

The combined wealth gains of the seven men since the start of 2020 now totals $267.1bn, taking their joint fortunes to $780.6bn.

This combined net worth now ranks in the top 20 countries globally in terms of GDP – ahead of Saudi Arabia and Switzerland – according to the International Monetary Fund.

The wealth gains of billionaires during the pandemic has been criticised by human rights organisations and politicians.

US Senators Bernie Sanders, Kristen Gillibrand and Ed Markey have called for a one-time pandemic wealth tax on billionaires's windfall gains.

Their Make Billionaires Pay Act would recover 60 per cent of all the money gained since March in order to provide health care for all.

"At a time of enormous economic pain and suffering, we have a fundamental choice to make," Senator Sanders said in August.

"We can continue to allow the very rich to get much richer while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Or we can tax the winnings a handful of billionaires made during the pandemic to improve the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans."