Stock falls mark forgettable year for tech billionaires Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page and Brin
While big names in tech – Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page and Brin – saw their fortunes eroded in 2022 due to massive equity falls, there was one notable outlier.
The fortunes of Silicon Valley billionaires took a beating in 2022 as share prices of the world’s tech giants plummeted.
The list included Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX, among others.
After becoming the world’s richest person in 2021, the tech boss saw over half of his net worth evaporate this year, boosting France’s luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault into the top spot.
Musk lost $US140bn in 2022 due to the collapse of Tesla’s share price, leaving his total net worth at $US130bn, according to Bloomberg’s index of the world’s richest people.
Once the darling of Wall Street investors, the future of the electric car company is now under question after Musk pushed through with a $US44bn buyout of Twitter in October that many observers see as an expensive distraction.
Musk largely financed his purchase by selling off shares in Tesla, putting the share price into an even steeper downward spiral.
Meanwhile efforts by Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta and Facebook, to woo investors into his so-called metaverse, failed.
The share price in Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has fallen off a cliff in 2022.
Wall Street’s lack of confidence has sliced $US81bn off of Zuckerberg’s fortune, leaving it at $US44.4bn as of December 28.
Meta has faced stiff competition from breakout app TikTok and – like rival Google – is plagued by a morose advertising market as the world economy faces a downturn amid high inflation.
Meanwhile, the fortunes of Jeff Bezos, who stepped down as chief executive of Amazon in July 2021, are still heavily tied to the online retail giant’s share price, which has fallen by more than 49 per cent in 2022.
Bezos is devoting much of his time to developing space exploration projects through his company Blue Origin.
Bezos, who remains as Amazon’s executive chairman, has lost more than $US86bn this year, leaving a fortune estimated at $US106bn.
The 58-year-old entrepreneur and owner of the Washington Post also told CNN in November that he planned to donate most of his wealth to charity during his lifetime.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have not helmed the company since 2019, but remain board members of parent company Alphabet, which also owns health, artificial intelligence and other subsidiaries.
Alphabet’s share price has declined 39 per cent since January, punished by declining online advertising revenues and increased competition from Apple and Amazon.
Page’s wealth is down to $US46.1bn and Brin’s is down to $US44.8bn. They are still the 10th and 11th richest people on the planet, according to Bloomberg.
Chinese billionaire Zhang Yiming is an outlier to the tech debacle. The founder of TikTok-owner Bytedance saw his fortune rise by $US10.4bn in 2022. His $US55bn net worth makes him the second richest person in China and 23rd richest person in the world.
But storm clouds are looming for TikTok as political pressure builds in Washington over accusations that the video-sharing app’s immense success leaves the US vulnerable to Communist Party-led China.
Federal officials have already banned TikTok on government phones and are reportedly mulling whether to force Bytedance to sell its US version of the app.
– AFP
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