The impressive growth of the artificial intelligence industry and its better-than-expected market projections for the following years continue adding billions of dollars to AI billionairesโ wealth.
These tech titans, whose companies played a major role in the AI revolution, have already increased their wealth substantially over the past four years, but 2024 might set a new record.
According to data presented by Stocklytics.com, the worldโs eight richest AI billionaires are now worth more than $1.1 trillion, more than the GDP of Saudi Arabia.
Artificial intelligence has become a synonym for growth over the past years. AI companies led the stock price rally and became the new shining objects for VC investors, while AI technologies reached hundreds of millions of users worldwide, both in the private and corporate sectors, helping them to improve efficiency and decision-making and gain a competitive edge.
From generative AI and machine learning to self-driving cars, these technologies have reshaped our world and brought hundreds of billions of dollars of profit to tech moguls and the companies behind them. Although the world`s top AI billionaires have already seen their wealth skyrocket, 2024 might set a new record.
According to the Forbes Rich List, the combined net value of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Elison, and Jensen Huang amounted to $745 billion last year. These eight AI billionaires were worth more than the GDP of countries like Argentina and Poland and only slightly less than the GDP of Switzerland.
Since then, they have collectively added more than $390 billion to their wealth, which now amounts to $1.13 trillion. To put this into another perspective, this is enough to rank them as the seventeenth-largest economy globally.
Although all these tech titans have added tens of billions of dollars to their fortunes in the past year, no one is close to Mark Zuckerberg. The CEO of Meta Platforms has become a significant player in the rapidly evolving AI landscape, with his company investing heavily in AI research and development, and focusing on virtual reality experiences in the Metaverse, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision. Mark Zuckerbergโs wealth soared by $112.6 billion year-over-year and hit $177 billion, the biggest increase among top AI billionaires.
Jeff Bezos follows Zuckerberg with an $80 billion net worth increase in the past year. Last year, Bezos was worth $114 billion; and in 2024, his net worth is $194 billion. The CEO of AI giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has seen the third-largest net worth growth among the top AI billionaires, adding close to $56 billion to his fortune in the last year.
Although far below these figures, other AI billionaires have also added impressive figures to their wealth. Google co-founders and major investors in AI company DeepMind, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have both added around $34 billion to their wealth in the past year, just like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Bill Gates is worth $128 billion, $24 billion more than a year ago.
The wealthiest AI billionaire, Elon Musk, saw the smallest net worth growth in the past year. With a net worth of $195 billion, Muskโs wealth increased by $15 billion year-over-year, seven times less than Zuckerberg`s and four times less than that of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
How rich will they be in 2025?
Real time updates show Musk has pulled even further ahead to be worth just shy of $260bn, followed by Jeff Bezos at $213bn and Larry Page at $206.4bn.
In fact, the only real-time top 5 billionaire who is not directly involved in AI is Bernard Arnault, worth $167.1bn as of market close yesterday.
If these AI billionairesโ wealth grows at the average rate of Mark Zuckerbergโs of 9.6% so far in 2024, they will be worth a combined $1.205 trillion next year, around the same as the GDP of the Netherlands and over half of the value of the entire Russian economy.
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