The Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder's net worth was recorded at 8.5bn (£138.9bn) in New York on Thursday.

That was around .5bn more than Amazon Inc founder Mr Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017.

Mr Musk's increased wealth came as a result of a bounce in Tesla's share price.

The company has seen its value soar over the past 12 months and is the most valuable car maker in the world.

Mr Musk, 49, responded to the news with a low-key message on Twitter. "How strange," he wrote. "Well, back to work…"

The Forbes Billionaires List, however, said the South African-born business magnate still trails Mr Bezos, 56, by some .8bn.

Forbes has a more conservative estimate based on the Tesla stake that he has pledged as collateral for personal loans.  

To take that into account, it applies a 25 per cent discount to his shareholding, according to its report in November.

Mr Musk, who co-founded and sold internet payments company PayPal Holdings Inc, now leads some of the most futuristic companies in the world.

Besides Tesla, he heads rocket company SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.

He set up the Boring Company to make affordable tunnels below busy city streets for an all-electric public transportation system to avoid the nasty traffic jams in US cities.

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