Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg lost billions in 2022
2022 has been hard on the world’s richest tech billionaires — relatively speaking, of course.
The technology industry has been among the worst hit by weak economic growth, surging inflation rates, and a strong dollar.
Software and hardware companies, Internet giants, and one particular cutting-edge motoring firm have taken a beating on the stock markets.
MyBroadband compiled a list of the world’s wealthiest people in the tech industry based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — as of market close on 14 December 2022.
Altogether, around $390 billion (R6.7 trillion) was wiped off the net worth of the world’s top 10 richest tech billionaires.
The world’s richest tech billionaire, by some margin, was South African-born Elon Musk.
With his combined stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and Twitter, he had a total net worth of $161 billion (R2.8 trillion) at the time of writing.
To put that in perspective, all of South Africa’s major telecoms companies — Vodacom, MTN, Telkom, Cell C owner Blue Label, and Rain — had a combined market cap/valuation of about R560 billion.
Below are the top 10 wealthiest people in the technology industry as of 14 December 2022, with their net worth and year-to-date net worth changes.
1. Elon Musk — $161 billion (down $109 billion)
While he added a new company to his portfolio in 2022, Musk’s wealth took a big hit as a result.
To fund his acquisition of Twitter, the eccentric billionaire had to sell some of his Tesla shares.
While reducing his stake in the world’s most valuable automaker sent Tesla’s share price plummeting, further reducing Musk’s fortune.
In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk owns brain implant startup Neuralink, open-source development project OpenAI, and private rocket company SpaceX, which was recently valued at about $140 billion,,
2. Jeff Bezos — $115 billion (down $77.5 billion)
Bezos founded the world’s biggest ecommerce company — Amazon.com — and served as its CEO for 27 years. He owns around 10% of the company’s stock.
Amazon.com shares lost about half their value during 2022 due to a downturn in online sales, as consumers have cut down on shopping in a tough economy.
Bezos has been less involved at the company since stepping down in July 2021, and has seemingly shifted much of his focus to the endeavours of his private space tourism company — Blue Origin.
3. Bill Gates — $116 billion (down $22.4 billion)
The co-founder and former CEO of software giant Microsoft has been much-less involved in the tech space and focused much of his attention in 2022 on tackling public health issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gates holds roughly 1% of Microsoft stock, but also has stakes in Canadian National Railway, Deere, and Ecolab, all of which are managed by Cascade Investment.
Microsoft’s share price has dropped around a fifth of its value during the year, likely significantly impacting Gates’s net worth.
4. Larry Ellison — $93.8 billion (down $13.3 billion)
Ellison’s wealth has not declined nearly as much as many of the other billionaires on this list.
That is because the share price of database company Oracle, which Ellison founded and currently heads as CEO, is trading at a very similar level to the start of the year.
Ellison holds a 40% stake in Oracle and has shares in Tesla, the Indian Wells tennis event, a sailing team, and real estate, including 98% of Hawaii’s Lanai island.
5. Steve Ballmer — $90.8 billion (down $14.8 billion)
A former CEO of Microsoft for 13 years, Ballmer actually holds a larger share in the company than Bill Gates — 4%. He also owns the LA Clippers basketball team.
While Microsoft’s year-to-date share price has come down quite a bit more than Oracle, it has also not been as heavily impacted as more Internet-focused companies.
6. Larry Page — $88.4 billion (down $40 billion)
The fortune of the co-founder of Alphabet, the parent company of search and online advertising giant Google, declined substantially in 2022.
Page owns roughly 6% of Alphabet’s ordinary shares and 26% of voting power in the company.
Alphabet’s shares have lost roughly a third of their value in 2022, a near-direct correlation with Page’s wealth decline for the year.
7. Sergey Brin — $84.5 billion (down $39 billion)
The other half of Alphabet’s founding duo, Sergey Brin, owns only slightly fewer shares in the company.
But he holds the 25% voting power needed to give the pair combined control over Alphabet.
The change in Brin’s fortune in 2022 can also be attributed to Alphabet’s share price drop.
8. Zhang Yiming — $54.9 billion (up $10.4 billion)
Zhang might be most teenagers’ favourite on this list. The Chinese billionaire founded ByteDance, the social media group that created popular video-sharing app TikTok
Zhang served as the company’s chief executive officer until March 2021, in the early days of China’s tech crackdown. He reportedly spends most of his time in Singapore.
ByteDance is among few of the tech companies owned by billionaires on this list which saw an increase in value during the year, buoying Zhang’s wealth.
However, it remains to be seen what impact increased scrutiny by the US government will have on its value in the coming year.
9. Michael Dell — $49.5 billion (down $5.44 billion)
It’s right there in the surname. Dell is the founder and CEO of one of the world’s biggest computer and PC peripheral manufacturers — Dell Technologies.
He is also a shareholder of cloud computing and virtualisation software company VMWare.
Dell and other computer makers saw a downturn in demand for their machines in 2022, particularly compared to 2020 and 2021, when consumers splurged on new PCs to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
10. Mark Zuckerberg — $46.1 billion (down $79.4 billion)
The co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, has probably had the roughest 2022 of anyone on this list.
Zuckerberg’s net worth had declined by over 63% by market close on 14 December 2022.
The share price of Meta Platforms — in which Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder by some margin — had dropped by over 64%.
While the reasons for Meta’s monumental plunge are manifold — the general decline in online advertising sales in 2022 and Zuckerberg’s seemingly nonsensical hyper-focus and overspending on the metaverse — have investors concerned.
Source mybrodband.co.za
