Inventor and engineer Elon Musk has been named at number 21 on Forbes’ list of most powerful people for 2016. He rated higher than the chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple, Tim Cook, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
Musk is South African-born, and has a net worth of $11,5 billion. His net worth also puts him as the 94th richest person in the world. He is the CEO of Tesla, an electric-vehicle manufacturer and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), the company involved in the building of a vehicle hoping to take humans to Mars.
Forbes chose Musk because he is “…trying to redefine transportation on earth and in space.”
Musk moved up 17 positions from number 38 on last year’s list. The honours have been coming for him this week, as he was named to Donald Trump’s President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, along with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Uber Technologies’ Travis Kalanick Rometty. The panel is an advisory panel to the United States President-elect.