World’s top 8 richest now hold fortune worth US $1 trillion, added $110 billion in 2021

The world’s top richest people collectively hold a fortune of more than $1 trillion after at least eight tech moguls added $110 billion to their shares this year, 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin joined the $100bn club of the wealthiest after a massive share surge in their tech firm’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. due to the coronavirus pandemic. 48-year-old Page’s riches spiked from $21bn in 2021 to $103.6bn last week, ahead of market reopening on Monday, as he secured the position of the sixth richest person in the world. Alphabet’s shares meanwhile surged by a whopping 32 percent in 2021. The 47-year-old entrepreneur Brin, who had previously held a $100.2bn fortune, saw an increase of $20.4bn in his wealth. The two co-founders own 51 percent of the special class of Alphabet’s voting shares.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates slipped to the third position in the world’s richest list with an estimated $145bn wealth. Gates became the first centibillionaire in 1999 but had lost a fortune to the dot-com bubble, since securing the position of the world’s third-wealthiest person, briefly regaining his title in 2019.  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, has been able to double his wealth to $197bn as he gained $100bn in 2017, stringently retaining the world’s richest man title. The former hedge fund manager began his company Amazon in a garage in 1994 and runs The Washington Post newspaper. Although 2 months ago, Bezos announced that he will step down as Amazon CEO in Q3 2021.

[Image Credit: Bloomberg Billionaires Index]

Elon Musk secures second position

Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk secured the second position on the billionaire’s index with an estimated $175bn fortune. He also runs projects such as Hyperloop a proposed ultra-high-speed train line. Musk had briefly overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person in January 2021 with an approximately 6 percent spike in his electric car manufacturing company Tesla shares. Tesla’s share pricing on January 7 lifted the value of Musk’s stock holdings and options by $10 billion, taking his net worth to about $191 billion. A more modest rise of less than 2 percent had lifted Bezos’ Amazon shares by about $3 billion, putting his net worth at approximately $187 billion, slightly lesser than Musk. 

In February, the Tesla CEO lost more than $15 billion of net worth and his company’s shares plunged by 8.6 percent owing to a tweet where he said prices of Bitcoin and the smaller rival Ether “do seem high”. Tesla recorded its biggest decline since September 2020 fueled by billionaire’s cryptocurrency remark. The current top 8 Billionaire's list also features Bernard Arnault, the majority shareholder of the luxury goods empire LVMH who owns a fortune worth close to $132bn, followed by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is worth $118bn fortune, and the veteran investor Warren Buffett with an estimated $104bn wealth.