Elon Musk loses title as world's richest man

The race to be the richest person in the world is one that changes all the time - stock fluctuations and market volatility mean it isn't easy to stay on top for long.

That has been confirmed once again this week, as Elon Musk is no longer the wealthiest human on the planet - a spot he's held for a good number of months.

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Instead, Musk has been overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Bezos' net wealth now stands at almost exactly $200 billion, a small slice more than Musk's $198 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

This comes as a result of a massively volatile 12 months for Musk, in which Bloomberg's tracker estimates he lost a little over $31 billion in net wealth.

By comparison, Bezos seems to have serenely gained around $23.4 billion in the same time, a swing that has snuck him into the top spot.

Needless to say, those figures are absolutely crazy, the sorts of numbers that are hard to actually get your head around, and they're just the change in the last year, rather than their total net worth.

Musk's changing fortunes aren't a huge surprise after a bumpy year of ups and downs for the Tesla founder. His purchase of X (formerly known as Twitter) has been a tempestuous one that has seen some experts estimate its value as plummeting.

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On top of that, Tesla has been busy with the release of the Cybertruck in the last few months, and Musk's attentions have been pretty divided - don't forget that Neuralink, another of his companies, just started human trials for its brain implants.

Some of his ventures continue to do well, but that hasn't stopped him slipping from his top spot, and a recent judgment that stopped him from getting a huge $55.8 billion payslip from Tesla could also have had a major impact on his immediate net wealth.

Bezos seems to have a much simpler time of it, by contrast, as his executive chairman role at Amazon and his space venture Blue Origin seemingly less of a day-to-day distraction compared to Musk's portfolio.

Bezos reportedly still owns just under 10% of Amazon, so even with share sales that have raised him billions in the last few years, he's not in any danger of slipping too far down the list anytime soon - barring total economic disaster.