Tech billionaires lead $500B AI wealth surge

America’s most powerful tech bosses just walked away with over $550 billion in fresh wealth this year, riding the wave of investor cash flooding into anything tied to AI. The money didn’t come from product launches or economic growth. It came from people betting big on chips, servers, and promises.

By Christmas Eve, the top 10 tech founders and CEOs controlled nearly $2.5 trillion, up from $1.9 trillion at the beginning of the year, according to Bloomberg.

The massive jump came as the S&P 500 climbed more than 18%, and the hype around AI infrastructure kept stocks like Tesla, Nvidia, and Oracle inflated.

“This is all speculative and correlated to the success of AI,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and OpenAI consultant. “There’s a huge question mark over whether this is all going to pay off, but investors are betting that it will.”

Musk retakes top spot as Oracle and Meta stumble

Elon Musk ended the year back on top, with a net worth now sitting at $645 billion, a 49% jump.

Cryptopolitan had reported that Elon briefly fell behind Larry Ellison in September, but a $1 trillion Tesla pay deal helped pull him ahead again. His rocket company SpaceX, now worth $800 billion, also added to his stack.

Larry, who runs Oracle, had hit $251 billion this year after announcing a $300 billion data center contract with OpenAI. That deal gave his net worth a 31% lift. But after reaching that high, Oracle’s stock dropped 40%, as investors started asking questions about how he planned to fund such a huge build-out.

Mark Zuckerberg, who oversees Meta, saw his rank drop after the company’s stock slipped. Investors weren’t thrilled about how much Meta has been spending on AI servers and big-name talent. Zuckerberg’s net worth still grew 14% to $236 billion, but that wasn’t enough to keep him in the top five.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, both shot up the ladder this year. Page is now worth $270 billion, up 61%, while Brin hit $251 billion, with a 59% gain. Their push into building AI models and chips gave them the edge they needed to leap ahead of Zuck and Larry El.

Nvidia’s Huang cashes out as Gates drops off

Jensen Huang, who founded Nvidia, saw his wealth grow 37%, ending the year at $156 billion. Nvidia became the most valuable public company in the world this year, now worth over $4 trillion, though Jensen has also sold over $1 billion worth of stock, this year.

Jeff Bezos wasn’t quiet either. He offloaded $5.6 billion worth of Amazon shares, ending the year at $255 billion, up 7%. Michael Dell sold more than $2 billion in Dell stock and now holds $141 billion, a 14% increase.

At the bottom of the pile sits Billy Gates. He’s the only one in the top 10 whose net worth dropped. He sold off chunks of his Microsoft stock throughout the year to keep funding his charity work, bringing his total down 26% to $118 billion.

Below is S&P 500 index year-to-date performance by rank:

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