文| Fib Liu
Riding the wave of artificial intelligence, the wealth of the world's richest tech giants has reached unprecedented heights.
There are many rich people in the world, but there are not so many real giants, and the tech giants on the planet are increasingly in the latter camp.
On this year's Forbes list of the world's billionaires, there are 342 tech giants on the list, an increase of 29 from last year. Collectively, these billionaires have a combined net worth of $2.6 trillion, the highest of any industry, a staggering $750 billion more than in 2023, and an increase more than any other industry.
No one has been happier than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the past year, as his fortune has grown by nearly $113 billion to $177 billion, more than any other billionaire.
Meta's shares are up 182%, and Zuckerberg, who owns 14% of the company, jumped to No. 4 on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires, his highest ranking ever, from 16th last year. Zuckerberg called last year a "year of efficiency" for Meta — rejoicing investors with layoffs, cost-cutting, and a focus on advertising and its core business. In addition, on the company's 20th anniversary, Meta also paid its first dividend, and Zuckerberg also bet heavily on the AI space. He told Forbes in 2023: "Artificial intelligence will run through everything at Meta. ”
Of course, the main reason behind the rally in tech stocks is the AI boom, with investors flocking to companies that make AI products or sell to AI companies.
Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, is the epitome of that craze, and last year was also a stellar year for him: Nvidia's stock price soared, putting Huang in the top 20 of the world's richest people for the first time with a net worth of $77 billion, and he ranked 78th last year. Another Nvidia shareholder, Harvey Jones, a founding board member, has also become a new billionaire because of the soaring stock price and is among several new AI moguls on the Forbes rich list.
A number of other tech giants in the United States have not been idle, investing heavily in large language models for artificial intelligence and the processing power they require, which has excited investors and made the founders of these companies richer: Microsoft has partnerships with OpenAI and Inflection AI, and Amazon and Alphabet have invested in Anthropic AI With a lot of investment, Alphabet has also developed its own large language model, Gemini. Several billionaires associated with these companies — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Larry Ellison — All have increased their wealth by at least $20 billion from last year. (Elon Musk, the world's second-richest man, does use a lot of technology in his most valuable holding, Tesla, but not because we classify him as a billionaire in the auto industry.) )
Since last year, the world's richest tech billionaires have collectively increased their fortunes by $750 billion. With the exception of Zhang Yiming and Ma Huateng, everyone else has achieved wealth growth. The above is the change in their wealth during this period (the value is in billions of dollars, yellow represents their net worth on March 10, 2023, and red represents their net worth on March 8, 2024). ）
Most of this year's tech billionaires aren't even doing their day-to-day work for the companies that drive their growing wealth. Of the 10 richest tech billionaires this year, only Zuckerberg, Huang and Dell remain CEOs of their respective companies.
In 2021, Bezos resigned as CEO of Amazon. In the same year, ByteDance's Zhang Yiming also resigned as the company's CEO and chairman, but remained an important shareholder of the company. It has been four years since Page and Brin left the day-to-day operations of Alphabet, with Bill Gates stepping down from Microsoft's board of directors in 2020 and Ballmer stepping down as Microsoft's CEO in 2014. (Bill Gates revealed to Forbes last year that he spends about 10 percent of his annual time meeting with teams at Microsoft.) Others, such as Page and Brin, oversee the company's operations as board members. ）
Here are the 10 richest people in tech and how their wealth has performed over the past 12 months. (The net worth statistics are as of March 8, 2024, and the comparison of net worth is March 10, 2023.) ）
01. Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $194 billion, an increase of $80 billion from last year
Source of Wealth: Amazon
The founder of Amazon has reaped a lot of money and sunshine this year. Bezos' personal wealth has grown by $80 billion from last year, thanks to a 93% jump in shares of the e-commerce giant. Meanwhile, after 30 years of living and working in wet and rainy Seattle, Bezos announced last year that he would move to sunny, tax-friendly Florida and spent $150 million on a property on Indian Creek Island, Miami, known as the "Billionaire Bassy."
02. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $177 billion, an increase of $113 billion over last year
Source of wealth: Meta
The past year has been an extraordinary journey for the Meta CEO. After Meta's share price fell 75% from its peak in 2021, Zuckerberg laid off nearly a quarter of the company's workforce, but still held on to a huge bet on artificial intelligence and the metaverse. Thanks to Meta's nearly two-fold share price last year, Zuckerberg, 39, has reached an all-time personal wealth this year.
03. Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $141 billion, an increase of $34 billion from last year
Source of wealth: Oracle
Ten years after stepping down as Oracle's CEO, Ellison remains the company's chairman, chief technology officer, and largest shareholder, holding 40% of the company's shares. Over the past 12 months, Oracle shares have risen 34%, generating more than $1 billion (pre-tax) in dividend income for Ellison and adding $34 billion to his wealth. But his bets on other companies are not doing so well: The $1 billion he bought shares of X (formerly Twitter) is now trading at less than a third of the price it bought, and Project Ronin, another cancer software startup he co-founded in 2018, is closing.
04. Bill Gates
Bill Gates
Net worth: $128 billion, an increase of $24 billion from last year
Source of wealth: Microsoft
Although Gates' net worth is almost the highest in the history of personal wealth, Gates ranks this year at its lowest level since 1992 due to stiff competition at the top of the rich list, a costly divorce in 2021 and his donation of $59 billion to charity. From 1995 to 2017, he was the co-founder of Microsoft and was the world's richest man for 18 consecutive years.
05. Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $121 billion, an increase of $40 billion from last year
Source of wealth: Microsoft
This summer, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers will move his fifth-ranked NBA team to a new stadium: his privately funded $2 billion Intuit Dome stadium near Los Angeles International Airport. Ballmer's fortune has grown by $40 billion since last year, partly because of the Clippers' increased market capitalization, but mostly because of Microsoft's soaring stock price.
06. Larry Page
Larry Page
Net worth: $114 billion, $35 billion more than last year
Source of wealth: Google
Page and his co-founder, Brin, have not been involved in Google's day-to-day operations for five years, but remain one of the company's largest shareholders. After selling $2.5 billion worth of stock (before taxes) between mid-2021 and mid-2022, Page hasn't sold any more shares. He spent most of his time away from the public eye, spending time on five private islands, including Fiji and Puerto Rico.
07. Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Net worth: $110 billion, $34 billion more than last year
Source of wealth: Google
The Google co-founder, who reportedly came out of semi-retirement, submitted code changes to Google's AI chatbot model last year and was listed as one of the "core contributors" to the Gemini model when it was released in December. Because of his risk of developing a genetic mutation in Parkinson's disease, Brin donated $150 million in 2023 to research treatments for the degenerative disease, and he has donated a total of $1.25 billion to the cause to date.
08. Michael Dyer
Michael Dell
Net worth: $91 billion, an increase of $41 billion from last year
财富来源：戴尔科技（Dell Technologies）
Dell had a fruitful year with one of the largest acquisitions in history. In November, Broadcom bought Dell Technologies' VMware, in which Michael Dell holds a 40 percent stake, for $69 billion in cash and stock. For the founder and CEO, the acquisition earned him about $30 billion. Around the same time, he also donated more than $3 billion to his family foundation, and the combination of cash, Dell stock, and Broadcom stock is sure to reduce Dell's huge tax bills.
09. Jensen Huang
Net worth: $77 billion, an increase of $56 billion from last year
Source of wealth: Nvidia
The name Nvidia derives from the Latin word for "invidia," and Huang has had a lot to envy over the past year: his company's stock price has risen by a staggering 300 percent, and as CEO and 3 percent shareholder, he has reached the pinnacle of his personal wealth and entered the top 20 of the world's billionaires list for the first time. However, Huang said in an interview at Stanford University in March: "I've done everything. I've cleaned more toilets than all of you combined. ”
10. Zhang Yiming
Net worth: $43 billion, down $1.6 billion from last year
Source of wealth: ByteDance
Among the 20 richest tech billionaires this year, Zhang Yiming is one of only two whose fortunes have shrunk from last year. Although he resigned as chairman of ByteDance in 2021, he remains a major shareholder of the company. His fortune has also taken a hit due to ByteDance's declining valuation and speculation that its subsidiary TikTok could be banned in the United States or forced to divest from ByteDance.
This article is translated from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/04/02/tech-billionaires-have-added-an-astonishing-750-billion-to-their-fortunes-over-the-past-year/?sh=3efa4aa26d2b
