He eventually stepped off the board in 2020 but told Forbes in early 2023 that he still spends about 10% of his time consulting with teams at Microsoft. Arnault was the world’s richest person for most of the first half of 2023; he fell to No. 2 on June 8, 2023. As of January 1, 2024 Arnault is worth $9.4 billion more than a month ago, per Forbes’ estimates, following a rise in the the price of LVMH shares.
Net Worth: $12.7 Billion Age: 96 Country/Territory: Singapore Industry: Manufacturing
He headed up the company from 1997 to 2001 and then again from 2011 to 2019. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Meta Platforms, the company previously known as Facebook. The youngest member of this list, Zuckerberg began Facebook out of his dorm room at Harvard and quickly expanded it over the ensuing years. Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million and founded Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is commercializing space travel. He’s also a noted philanthropist, founding the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 with a donation of $10 billion and has said that he will give away most of his fortune.
Net Worth: $15.4 Billion Age: 74 Country/Territory: United States Industry: Finance & Investments
Capital spending across all Big Tech firms is on pace to reach $200 billion in 2025, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence report. Hangzhou-based DeepSeek has been developing AI models since 2023, but the company first came onto the radar of many Western investors this weekend as its free DeepSeek R1 chatbot app topped download charts worldwide. So many new users piled in that DeepSeek struggled to keep the app online, suffering outages and forcing it to restrict signups to users with Chinese phone numbers. Tech-sector titans as a group saw $94 billion of wealth evaporate — roughly 85% of the Bloomberg index’s total decline. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 3.1%, and the S&P 500 dropped 1.5%.
Net Worth: $29 Billion Age: 62 Country/Territory: United States Industry: Finance & Investments
One effort is to develop tools to help others cure, manage or prevent all disease; Zuckerberg and Chan spoke to Forbes earlier this year about their philanthropic efforts. And Zuckerberg talked to Forbes in September about Meta’s two biggest bets and more ahead bookkeeping and payroll services of the company turning 20. He and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged to direct 99% of their stock in the company toward measures that promote human potential.
Brian Armstrong is the chief executive of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.
- The big jump in his fortune came after SpaceX agreed to buy back insiders’ shares in a deal valuing the rocket company at $350 billion–a deal first reported by Bloomberg.
- Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang joins the top 10 richest for the first time at the start of the month.
- As of January 1, 2024, the richest person in the world is Elon Musk, the CEO of electric car company Tesla; he’s worth an estimated $251 billion.
- In 2016, he gave $200 million to the University of Southern California for a new cancer research center.
- Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan 24 that the company planned to spend US$60 billion to US$65 billion on projects related to AI this year, well above Wall Street estimates.
- Ballmer and his wife Connie are among the 25 most generous philanthropists in America.
Arnault, the CEO and chairman of LVMH, has built the company into a behemoth with more than 70 brands, from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior to Tiffany & Co. and Sephora. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories, except where prohibited by law for our mortgage, home equity and other home lending products. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where Accounting For Architects products appear on this site.