Global Tech Roundup: Elon Musk Becomes World’s Second Richest Man After Making $100bn in 2020

Hi Guys! It’s already the last Friday in the month of November. Looking back, the month has been packed with lots of good news and surprises. This last week isn’t any different as startups are still expanding and raising funds even as the year draws to an end.

Here is a quick roundup of some of the major stories around the globe you might have missed.

Elon Musk is now the World’s Second Richest Man

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has surpassed Bill Gates to become the world’s second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The CEO’s net worth now sits at around $128 billion, after increasing by $100 billion this year.

In January 2020, Musk ranked 35th on the Billionaires list

Musk’s rapid ascent this year was mainly driven by Tesla’s share price. The car company currently has a market cap of almost $500 billion, after starting the year at under $100 billion. Around three-quarters of Musk’s net worth consists of Tesla shares.

However, there is still a huge gap between Musk and the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos who has a reported net worth of around $182 billion.

China launches mission to bring back samples from the Moon

This week, China successfully launched a mission to bring a handful of lunar rocks from the Moon back to Earth before the end of the year. Tagged Chang’e 5, the mission if successful will be the first time since 1976 that dirt from the Moon has been returned to Earth

So far, only two nations — the United States and the former Soviet Union — have ever returned materials from the Moon. The Chang’e 5 could soon be next to bring back samples of the Moon.

Prior to this, China has landed on the moon twice, first in 2013 with the soft landing on the moon of Chang’e 3 and then early 2019 when they successfully put a lander and rover on the far side of the Moon with Chang’e 4.

TikTok sale deadline pushed back to December

The initial deadline for the sale of TikTok in the US has been pushed back. The last-minute extension was given to finalise a deal selling off its US business in order to avoid a ban.

The impending sale comes after US President, Donald Trump gave a directive in August for the company to be sold within 90 days or be shut down.

TikTok’s Parent company, Bytedance is already in talks with Walmart and Oracle about shifting TikTok’s US assets into their hands.

With the November 27 deadline already here, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) has granted ByteDance a one-week extension. According to CFIUS, it wants to use the time “to review a revised submission that the committee recently received”.

France starts collecting tax on tech giants

France government have sent out a notice to tech giants about its plan to start taxing them. France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has been pushing hard for tax reform for years.

He like many economy ministers in Europe think tech companies aren’t taxed properly. They generate revenue in one country but report to tax authorities in another country. According to them, they take advantage of countries with low corporate tax to optimize the bottom line.

According to the new tax law, companies that generate more than €750 million in revenue globally and €25 million in France, are operating a marketplace (Amazon’s marketplace, Uber, Airbnb), or an advertising business (Facebook, Google,). will have to pay 3% of its French revenue in taxes.

Once enforced, tax paid by big tech in the US may reduce. This may also lead to a retaliatory tax which will see French companies in America pay more.

Amazon Web Services outage takes down a portion of the internet

This week, Amazon Web Services had several outages which took down a chunk of the internet with it. This was because any app, site or service that relies on AWS could have been down too. And that’s a lot.

Amazon said the issue was largely localized to North America and that it was working on a resolution. However, it didn’t reveal the cause of the outage.

Meanwhile, a number of other companies such as Adobe and Roku, have pointed to the AWS outage as the reason for their own service issues. Currently, there are no reported cases of an outage.

You can check out other news that happened during the week here. Have a nice weekend!!