Since the start of the industrial revolution, those who drive the technology that will disrupt processes and change lives have prospered – and that’s never been clearer than it is today.
With AI, cloud computing, electric vehicles, ecommerce, and more all showing exponential growth, it would almost be weird if the entrepreneurs behind the leading tech titans were not among the richest people in the world.
But their dominance is clear from the latest daily reading of the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. Eight of the top ten are in tech. But did they start in that sector and what was the biggest catalyst to their huge fortunes?
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man with a net worth of $373 billion. But while he’s known for Tesla, SpaceX, X.com and others, the South African born billionaire’s first venture was as co-founder of Zip2, an online city guide, which he sold to Compaq for a significant sum. He then co-founded X.com, which later merged to become PayPal. He has recently revived the X.com name of course, having rebranded Twitter.
Larry Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories (later renamed Oracle) in 1977 with just $2,000 and quickly picked up clients including the CIA. Today he’s worth $293 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg’s $251 billion fortune originated from a simple idea during his time at Harvard University to create an online social network and in 2004, he co-founded "TheFacebook" from his dorm room.
Jeff Bezos started out in financial services, moving from fintech to banking to hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. He started Amazon when he spotted the potential of the internet in 1994. His net worth today is $249 billion.
Rounding out the top five is Steve Balmer, the first business manager at Microsoft back in 1980, working his way through the ranks to become CEO at a time of strong growth for the company during which it launched Xbox and acquired companies such as Skype. His fortune is $174 billion.
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began their journeys to success and wealth by collaborating at college to create an internet search engine – originally called BackRub. The rest is history.
Also in the top 10 is Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang who has seen the company grow from a 3D graphics startup in 1993 to the chipmaker that is one of the drivers of the AI revolution today.
The non-tech billionaires in the list are French luxury consumer entrepreneur Bernard Arnault who started in his father’s construction business. He has built LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton into a world leader in luxury brands. His pivotal acquisition was Christian Dior in 1984.
Warren Buffett completes the top 10. The "Oracle of Omaha," built his fortune starting with small investments and partnerships in his youth and took control of a textile company named Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, expanding it to the diversified conglomerate it is today. He remains committed to value investing and will step down as CEO of his $1 trillion company at the end of 2025.
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