Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has overtaken Bill Gates to become the second-richest person in the world just weeks after he passed Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest.

It means only Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lies now ahead of him in the rankings. In January he ranked 35th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musks’ wealth soared after his electric car company Tesla was selected to join the S&P 500.

The 49-year-old’s net worth soared $7.2 billion to $127.9 billion, driven by a surge in Tesla’s share price, according to Bloomberg.  

The South African-born billionaire owns a 20 per cent stake in Tesla, which has seen its share price rise more than five-fold so far this year.

This year has been a wildly successful year for Musk – who saw his rocket company SpaceX send four astronauts into space earlier this month, fulfilling its first commercial contract with the US space agency Nasa.

This year alone the Musk has seen his fortune grow by $100.3 billion. 

About three-quarters of Musk’s net worth is comprised of Tesla shares, which are valued more than four times as much as his stake in Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX.