Since the Covid crisis in February 2020, stock markets have returned dramatically, helping to propel the wealth of the world’s billionaires to new highs. But no segment of the ultrarich has profited more than tech billionaires, who now have a total net worth of $2.5 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion a year ago on Forbes’ 2021 World’s Billionaires list.
Forbes discovered 365 billionaires with fortunes in technology this year, up from 241 the previous year. With 371 billionaires, it’s the industry with the second-highest number of billionaires behind finance and investments. However, the ultrarich’s overall wealth dwarfs that of any other category. The $2.5 trillion in cumulative net worth of IT billionaires outnumbers the $1.7 trillion in fashion and retail fortunes and the $1.5 trillion in banking and investments riches.
The list’s top-heavy composition is one of the reasons for technology’s supremacy. The combined net worth of the 20 wealthiest tech titans is $1.2 trillion, accounting for over half of the total net worth of all billionaires in their field. And IT tycoons make up eight of the top twenty wealthiest people on the planet, including six of the top ten.
While most of the world’s wealthiest billionaires are still based in the United States, China’s fast-growing internet sector has driven a new generation of tech moguls to the top. China now has nine of the top twenty tech billionaires, up from six last year.
Here are the Top 20 Richest Billionaires in Tech;
1 Jeff Bezos
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $177 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: AMAZON
At the end of the year, the founder of Amazon will step down as CEO. Bezos stated in February that he would resign as CEO in the third quarter of 2021 to focus on other endeavors, including his space firm, Blue Origin, the Washington Post, and charitable initiatives like the Amazon Day 1 Fund. His $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund distributed $791 million to 16 climate change charities in 2020.
2 Bill Gates
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $124 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: MICROSOFT
Although Gates fell out of the top two wealthiest persons globally for the first time since 2008 on the Forbes Billionaires list, he now has a net worth of $100 billion. The Microsoft cofounder’s fortune increased by $26 billion, thanks to a 66 percent increase in the company’s stock and rising shares of tractor producer Deere & Co. Climate change is one of the significant challenges Gates is addressing with his riches; he told Forbes in February that he had committed $2 billion to groups trying to achieve zero emissions.
3 Mark Zuckerberg
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $97 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: FACEBOOK
Facebook has remained one of the most important venues for communication during the pandemic, but it has received a lot of criticism. Last summer, Zuckerberg testified (virtually) before Congress about possible antitrust violations, and in March, he testified again about Facebook’s role in spreading disinformation and extremism. The firm was particularly chastised for its role in facilitating the organizing of the January 6 disturbance on Capitol Hill. In December, his philanthropic and advocacy organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, made a $500 million commitment to racial justice activities.
4 Larry Ellison
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $93 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: SOFTWARE
Ellison is a prominent figure in the alleged tech departure from the San Francisco Bay Area to new hotspots like Texas and Florida. In Ellison’s case, Oracle, the software business he cofounded in 1977, relocated its headquarters to Austin, Texas, while he announced his relocation to Hawaii to his workers. The entrepreneur spent $300 million for the Hawaiian island of Lanai in 2012, which he has turned into a health and wellness laboratory. Ellison, a Trump ally more than most tech moguls, was also a driving force behind Oracle’s decision to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations, though the deal has yet to close.
5 Larry Page
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $91.5 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: GOOGLE
Like that of several other tech billionaires on our list, Larry Page’s claim to fame began in a college dorm room. Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the notion of increasing data extraction skills when using the Internet while at Stanford University in 1995. The team created “Backrub,” a new form of search engine technology named after its capacity to examine “backing links.” After that, Page and Brin co-founded Google in 1998, serving as CEO until 2001.
6 Sergey Brin
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $89 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: GOOGLE
Since stepping down as executive directors of Google parent firm Alphabet in late 2019, the Google co-founders have remained out of the spotlight. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, testified with Zuckerberg at congressional hearings in March and last summer. The two still control more than half of Alphabet’s voting rights, allowing them to have a say in business decisions.
7 Steve Ballmer
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NET WORTH: $68.7 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: MICROSOFT
Ballmer is the most prosperous sports club owner in America, thanks to a fortune he amassed while serving as CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. After purchasing The Forum in Inglewood for $400 million in 2020, Ballmer’s Los Angeles Clippers basketball team is set to break work on a new $1 billion venue this year. In the previous year, the Ballmer Group, a nonprofit foundation he founded with his wife, Connie, has donated $54 million to several Covid-19 relief programs.
8 Ma Huateng
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $65.8 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: INTERNET MEDIA
Like Facebook and Google in the United States, Chinese internet billionaire Pony Ma is under fire as his native government moves to rein in big tech. Tencent’s stock has been slowly declining since peaking in January, as the company’s digital payments unit became a focus of regulators. Nonetheless, Tencent’s impressive performance, particularly in the gaming sector, helped Ma secure his status as China’s richest tech magnate and second-richest individual overall (behind breakout bottled water billionaire Zhong Shanshan).
9 Colin Zheng Huang
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $55.3 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: E-COMMERCE
Pinduoduo’s cofounder made $38.8 billion in the previous year after his company became China’s top e-commerce platform by active users in March—just six years after its founding in 2015. In July, Huang stepped down as CEO, and he abruptly stepped down as chairman in March, entrusting his voting rights to the board. Huang assured shareholders that he would focus on food and life sciences research.
10 MacKenzie Scott
COUNTRY: THE UNITED STATES
NET WORTH: $53 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: AMAZON
Since getting a fourth of his ex-husband Jeff Bezos’ Amazon shares as part of their 2019 divorce settlement, Scott has begun giving it away at a rate and scale that dwarfs that of any other American philanthropist. Her charity donations exceeded $5.8 billion last year, including $4.1 billion to over 400 groups offering help to Americans during the pandemic during four months. Scott wedded in March after her new husband joined her on the Giving Pledge, which she had initially been signed in 2019.
11 Jack Ma
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $48.4 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: E-COMMERCE
The Alibaba co-founder has emerged as a critical character in China’s anti-tech regulatory campaign in recent months. After blasting regulators for restricting innovation, Ma vanished from the public glare in October. Authorities delayed Ant Group’s IPO, which had been scheduled for a record-breaking $34 billion offer, less than two weeks later. Ant Group said in January that it had reached an agreement with authorities to restructure the company to meet regulatory standards. Ma reappeared on a Livestream a few days later, promoting entrepreneurial support for the state’s “rural revitalization” tenet.
12 Michael Dell
COUNTRY: U.S.
NET WORTH: $45.1 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: DELL COMPUTERS
Dell Technologies’ stock has risen 187 percent in the last year, resulting in a $22.2 billion gain in the company’s chairman and CEO’s fortune. Dell pledged a $100 million commitment to the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to battle Covid-19 last year. The gift was split in half, with four-fifths going to small businesses and nonprofits affected by the pandemic and the balance going to medical organizations working to treat the virus.
13 Zhang Yiming
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $35.6 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: BYTEDANCE
ByteDance’s CEO and chairman, Zhang, owns roughly 22% of the Beijing-based internet behemoth he started in 2012. ByteDance continues to develop rapidly in the face of then-President Trump’s August 2020 decision to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets, fueled by the popularity of the news app Toutiao in China and video social networking app TikTok globally. ByteDance closed a new investment round in December, valuing the company at $180 billion. It also owns TikTok’s assets in the United States.
14 William Lei Ding
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $33 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: ONLINE GAMES
Ding is the founder and CEO of NetEase, a Chinese online gaming company that has produced successful titles, including Fantasy Westward Journey. After a year in which Covid-19 lockdowns drove up demand for NetEase’s games and, as a result, its stock, his fortune has nearly doubled. After completing a secondary offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June, NetEase, which has traded on NASDAQ since 2000, raised an extra $2.7 billion.
15 Wang Xing
COUNTRY: CHINA
NET WORTH: $26.1 BILLION
WEALTH SOURCE: E-COMMERCE
Wang made approximately $20 billion as Meituan (previously Meituan-Dianpingsales )’s soared, and its stock price soared 350 percent since March 2020. The multifaceted internet behemoth, which Wang established in 2010 as a Groupon clone, is investing heavily in digital offerings. Its food delivery branch, which is similar to DoorDash in the United States and witnessed tremendous demand due to the pandemic, has been a crucial driver to its recent success.
16 Shiv Nadar
INDIA IS THE COUNTRY
NET WORTH: $23.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: SOFTWARE SERVICES
Outside of the United States and China, Nadar is now the wealthiest tech billionaire. HCL Technologies, which he began in a garage in 1976, has rebounded from a stock market meltdown and is currently trading at record highs. For the first time in the company’s history, HCL surpassed $10 billion in yearly revenue last year.
