World’s top technology billionaires see collective wealth rise 21% to over $1trn

The world’s top technology billionaires, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, have seen their total wealth rise by as much as 21 percent to $1.08 trillion in one year, a new report, 100 Richest Persons in Technology list, by Forbes has shown. It is the first time their total wealth will be climbing above that psychological $1 trillion mark.

At the top of the list is Microsoft founder, Gates, whose worth is estimated at $84.5 billion; and it comes even after he had made donations of billions of dollars to charity. He is closely followed by Amazon founder, and chief executive, Bezos, who is estimated to be worth $81.7 billion. Earlier in the year, Bezos went above Gates for a brief period as the richest person both in technology and in the world.

Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook is third on the list and was the biggest gainer among the lot having added $15.6 billion to his wealth, owing to the social network’s rising stock price.

The growth in the wealth of the top persons in technology has been attributed to the boom in the prices of technology stocks across the board, with Facebook having seen a 44 percent growth in the last 14 months. Microsoft’s stocks have also risen by 46 percent, while Amazon has seen a 27 percent growth in its stock price.

Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Huateng (Pony) lead the Asian technology giants on the list. While Ma is ranked seventh, Huateng is ranked eighth and they are also the fourth and third biggest gainers respectively.

The new entrants to the list from the technology community are; Snap founders, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. This is even against what has been described as the underwhelming performance of Snap since going public earlier in the year.

The 10 richest tech billionaires in the world

Rank Name Worth 1 Bill Gates $84.5bn 2 Jeff Bezos $81.7bn 3 Mark Zuckerberg $69.6bn 4 Larry Ellison $59.3bn 5 Larry Page $43.9bn 6 Sergey Brin $42.7bn 7 Jack Ma $37.4bn 8 Ma Huateng $36.7bn 9 Steve Ballmer $32.9bn 10 Michael Dell $22.4bn