Despite a tumultuous year for the stock market, it was a good time to be a tech billionaire, The titans on Forbes’ second annual list of the world’s 100 Richest In Tech are worth a combined $892 billion, 6% more than a year ago. The minimum net worth is now $2.2 billion, up from $2 billion a year ago. Fifty-three of the top 100 added to their fortunes, while 27 got poorer. Twelve newcomers joined the ranks, and the top five billionaires collectively added $36.9 billion to their fortunes over the past year, accounting for two-thirds of all gains.
Just over half of the 100 Richest In Tech are from the United States, including eight of the top 10 richest on the list. Together, these 51 American tech founders and investors, the same number as on last year’s list, account for nearly two-thirds of the group’s total wealth. Thirty-seven of them live in California. China has the second highest number of techtycoons, with 19 people worth a combined $132.7 billion, just one fewer than last year. The richest Chinese list member is Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who has an estimated net worth of $25.8 billion. He is closely followed by Tencent founder and CEO Ma Huateng (known as Pony Ma), worth an estimated $22 billion. Canada has five tech billionaires and Germany has four. The other 11 countries with tech titans each have three or fewer members of this list.
With a $78 billion estimated fortune, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is once again the richest billionaire in tech as well as the richest person in the world — a position he’s held for over two decades. Since stepping down from his role as chairman of Microsoft in early 2014, Gates has continued to sell shares as he focuses on philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His stake in Microsoft today only accounts for approximately 15% of his net worth.
The second richest person in tech is also the biggest gainer on the list this year. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has an estimated $66.2 billion fortune, an increase of $18.4 billion since this list was released last year. That puts him ahead of Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, who was the second richest person in tech last year. Amazon stock has risen just over 40% in the past year, largely on the success of Amazon Web Services, which has made Amazon profitable for five straight quarters.
Ellison was also beaten by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who climbed from fourth to third place thanks to a 30% jump in the value of Facebook’s stock; he is now also California’s richest person, another title that previously belonged to Ellison. He’s not the only one getting rich from Facebook. In fact the social network has created more tech fortunes than any other company on this list. Nine of the 100 richest people in technology can trace some or all of their fortunes back to Facebook, including Facebook cofounders Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin, early employee Jeff Rothschild, Facebook investors Yuri Milner and Peter Thiel, and WhatsApp cofounders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who became billionaires when Facebook bought their messaging app for $18 billion in 2014. In the past year, this group of Facebook billionaires added $16.1 billion to their fortunes, not including Jeff Rothschild, who appeared on the Richest In Tech list for the first time this year with a net worth of $2.2 billion.
Only five women rank among the world’s 100 richest in tech. Two of these women, both from Hong Kong, made their fortunes through smartphone touch screen manufacturing, including the world’s richest female tech founder, Zhou Qunfei. She became a billionaire in 2015 after Lens Technology’s IPO, and has a net worth of $6.4 billion. America’s richest self-made woman in tech is health care software firm Epic Systems founder and CEO Judy Faulkner, who has a net worth of $2.7 billion. The only other American woman on the list is Hewlett-Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, who has a net worth of $2.2 billion.
Twelve billionaires dropped off the list this year. Some, like GoPro founder Nick Woodman, fell off because his fortune dropped below the $2.2 billion cutoff, while another four billionaires, including Steve Job’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs, were removed from the list because they inherited their fortunes; this year Forbes decided to include only billionaires who had built, worked at or invested in technology companies.
These 100 billionaires have an average age of 53, a decade younger than the average age of the entire 2016 FORBES Billionaires List. At 32, Moskovitz is the youngest person on the list, followed closely by Zuckerberg, who is 8 days older. The oldest list member, at age 87, is Intel cofounder Gordon Moore.
METHODOLOGY
For this list, Forbes excluded telecom and media in their definition of technology. they included people active in hardware, software, social media, online gambling, and high-tech manufacturing. This year, they excluded people like Laurene Powell Jobs who inherited their tech fortunes. they used stock prices and exchange rates from the close of business on Friday, August 5 to value publicly-traded fortunes.