The world's richest man started the new year richer, with Tesla founder Elon Mask adding $32.6 billion to his net worth bringing his fortune to $304.2 billion.
Musk's windfall once again took his worth over the $300 billion mark that he briefly passed in November, becoming the first person to ever do so.
According to Forbes, the controversial social-media savvy billionaire - who is also the founder behind the commercial space enterprise SpaceX - remained at the top of the world's rich list going into the new year.
In second place and $103.6 billion behind Musk is Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French fashion empire LVMH. Amazon founder and former-CEO Jeff Bezos sits in third place, Forbes said.
Tesla's soaring stock price has again been credited for the South African's growing wealth.
The world's richest man started the new year richer, with Tesla founder Elon Mask (pictured) adding $32.6 billion to his net worth, bringing his fortune to $304.2 billion
On Sunday, the electric car producer announced it had delivered more than 936,000 cars in 2021, surpassing projections by analysts, but also announced that the company had recalled 475,000 of its cars built between 2014 and 2021.
Forbes said Tesla shares increased by more than 13 percent by market close, with the company's market capitalisation again topping the $1 trillion mark, after dropping below that level last month.
As CEO of Tesla, Musk - who was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year - owns about 15.6 percent of the company's stock.
He has continued to sell shares, finishing the year having unloaded 3 million shares on the open market in order to cover the tax bills on around 5.7 million stock options that he exercised at the same time.
After questions levelled at billionaires - and Musk in particular - over whether they are paying their fair share in tax, Musk took to twitter in December to say that he would pay about $11 billion in taxes for 2021.
If true, this would place him among the biggest ever individual tax payers in the history of the US, although this only represents roughly 0.0036 percent of his worth.
Musk's windfall once again took his worth over the $300 billion mark that he briefly passed in November for the first time. His surge in wealth comes after he was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year (pictured)
Tesla's soaring stock price has again been credited for Musk's growing wealth. Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles last year, a record figure that represents an 87 percent increase from its 2020 delivery count. Pictured: A Tesla factory in China (file photo)
He reportedly sold 15.7 million Tesla shares over the course of 2021 - worth more than $16 billion before tax.
Musk's fortune jumped more than $200 billion over 2020 and 2021. In 2021 alone, he added $116 billion to his net worth.
This, Forbes said, is the biggest one-year gain by any billionaire since the news outlet began tracking the wealth of high net-worth individuals.
Musk is set to earn another windfall later this month when Tesla reports its fourth quarter earnings. If the company meets certain operational and valuation goals, the world's richest man is set to become even richer.
2021 was an eventful year for Musk, marked by a hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live, a break-up with girlfriend Grimes, and his self-coronation as 'Technoking' of Tesla.
Musk made huge waves last month as he sold off many billions worth of his Tesla stock in a move purportedly dictated by a poll he posted on Twitter.
In reality, at least some of the stock sales were driven by mandatory taxes as he exercised stock options that will expire in August.
He has sold $16.4 billion worth of shares since early November when he said he would sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock if Twitter users agreed, which they did.
But Musk in September had set up a prearranged plan for stock sales related to options expiring next year, and Tesla in a filing on Tuesday said the program was complete.
Musk said last week that he would be done selling shares after his programmed sales ended, meaning that the selloff is now complete.
The final trades, reported on Tuesday, included exercising an option on 1.6 million shares and selling 934,090 of those shares to pay for taxes.
In total, Musk has sold 15.7 million shares in Tesla late in this year, approximately the 10 percent stake the billionaire had pledged to sell.
He exercised options granted in 2012 to buy nearly 23 million shares at $6.24 each, a fraction of Tesla's share price, which stood at $1069.33 in late trading on Thursday, the final trading session of the year.
Pictured: Musk, age 24, at his computer in 1995. Musk's fortune jumped more than $200 billion over 2020 and 2021. In 2021 alone, he added $116 billion to his net worth
Tesla shares have fallen from their record highs, reached two days prior to Musk's infamous Twitter poll, but are still on pace to end the year up 54 percent from January 1.
The company has this week come under fire after it announced that it has opened a showroom in Xinjiang.
The move has attracted criticism from U.S. rights and trade groups, making it the latest foreign firm caught up in tensions related to the far-western Chinese region.
Xinjiang has become a significant point of conflict between Western governments and China in recent years, as U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps there.
China has rejected accusations of forced labour or any other abuses there, saying that the camps provide vocational training and that companies should respect its policies there.
The U.S. electric car maker announced the showroom's opening in Xinjiang's regional capital, Urumqi, on its official Weibo account last Friday. 'On the last day of 2021 we meet in Xinjiang,' it said in the post.
On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy organization, criticised the move, saying that Tesla was 'supporting genocide'.
The United States has labelled Chinaâs treatment of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang as genocide. The United States and a few other countries plan a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February over the issue.
'Elon Musk must close Teslaâs Xinjiang showroom,' Council on American-Islamic Relations said on its official Twitter account referring to Tesla's founder.
Similar criticism came from a U.S. trade group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The carmaker operates a factory in Shanghai and is ramping up production there amid surging sales in China.
A slew of foreign firms in recent months have been tripped up by tensions between the West and China over Xinjiang, as they try to balance Western pressure with China's importance as a market and supply base.
In July, Swedish fashion retailer H&M reported a 23% drop in local currency sales in China for its March-May quarter after it was hit by a consumer boycott in March for stating publicly that it did not source products from Xinjiang.
Last month, U.S. chipmaker Intel faced similar calls after telling its suppliers not to source products or labour from Xinjiang, prompting it to apologise for 'the trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public'.
Although some have been trying to reduce their supply chain exposure to the region, especially as Washington bans imports such as Xinjiang cotton or blacklists Chinese companies that it says have aided Beijing's policy there, many foreign brands operate stores there.
Tesla has also found itself under scrutiny from the NHTSA auto regulator, which is probing its autopilot system over safety concerns.
The automaker has also agreed to update its software to prevent drivers from playing video games on the car's system while the vehicle is in motion, following a government safety investigation.
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