Tech owners dominate Forbes' World’s Billionaires List 2024

By Abdulkadir Gunyol

ISTANBUL (AA) – Technology company owners dominated the World’s Billionaires List 2024 published by American magazine Forbes this week.

Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company, topped the list as the richest person in the world for the second time, with a net worth of $233 billion.

Coming in second was Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Neuralink, and X, with a net worth of $195 billion. He was placed second last year as well, with his fortune calculated at $180 billion.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon, came in third. He was on the rise especially at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as he managed to increase his net worth from $113 billion in 2020 to $177 billion only a year later.

He had a fortune of $171 billion in 2022, though this figure fell to $114 billion in 2023.

Nonetheless, Bezos managed to rise again this year as he managed to achieve a net worth of $194 billion, according to the Forbes list.

- Founder of Facebook almost triples net worth

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the tech conglomerate Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, was in the limelight as one of the people who increased their wealth the most on the list.

Zuckerberg ranked 16th in last year’s Forbes list with a value of $64.4 billion. He almost tripled this figure in 2024, reaching $177 billion and ranking fourth in the list.

Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, ranked fifth with $141 billion, while Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was seventh with a net worth of $128 billion.

Steve Balmer, former CEO of Microsoft, stood at the eighth position in the annual rich list with $121 billion, followed by Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, who has $114 billion and was ranked 10th.

Although Chinese tech company executives were not found in the top 10 of the list, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance and owner of TikTok, came in on the 27th position with a net worth of $43.4 billion.

*Writing by Emir Yildirim