Tech figures are among the billionaires who have seen the biggest drops in their fortunes in 2022.
200 billion dollars. This is the money that Elon Musk has lost since November 2021, according to estimates by Bloomberg. A plunge so dizzying that it granted the American billionaire the sad title of the first individual to lose such a large fortune. In question, the fall in the price of the car manufacturer Tesla on the stock market and the soap opera around Twitter.
Obviously, Elon Musk is far from homeless despite the collapse. His personal fortune is still beyond 100 billion dollars – 137 billion, according to a score from the American media on December 30, 2022. Tesla’s action also seems to have experienced a relative rebound since the start of the year, after months of decline.
Tech figures among the big losers in 2022
The attention of the media has mainly focused on the situation of Elon Musk, due, in particular, to the extent of the fall. But, other billionaires in the world have seen their wealth decline, sometimes sharply, throughout the year 2022. This is precisely shown by a summary by computer graphic designer David McCandless, published on January 16, on fifteen of the world’s largest fortunes.
In this panorama, the amounts differ slightly from those of Bloomberg: thus, Elon Musk would have lost rather 150 billion dollars. This difference is explained by the fact that the time range considered is not quite the same. On this scale, however, this gap of 50 billion is almost secondary: we remain on coherent orders of magnitude.
The graph brings together personalities who have made a fortune in many fields, including high-tech and digital. We thus find names like Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook), Sergueï Brin (Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Larry Page (Google), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Jack Ma (Alibaba).
The extent of losses varies from one profile to another, whether on the amount cleared or the level of the tumble. Thus, Jack Ma lost “only” 4.6 billion dollars, which represents a drop of 12%. Conversely, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos experienced two of the biggest declines of the year (approximately −60 and −40%), depriving them of 77 and 86 billion dollars.
Over the year, however, the most marked descent does not come from known names in tech… but from MacKenzie Scott. This is the former wife of Jeff Bezos, who helped her husband co-found the e-commerce giant. Her separation gave her the right to tens of billions of dollars, which she now spends on philanthropic actions.
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