An alternative title to this piece could be the 10 richest people in technology- an industry that all who made it to the list, share.
The recent pandemic has shown giant strides in the economic viability of cyberspace. Traditional businesses with little to no online presence have pivoted into the dot-com space to remain relevant to the online market.
Here’s a list of 2022’s richest people in the world.
Coming in at 10th place is Gautam Adani, the founder and chair of Indian multinational, Adani Group.
While their core businesses are mostly in Energy (Adani Green Energy), Gas (Adani Total Gas), and Logistics (Adani Ports), the Adani Group has also invested in the Information Technology industry through Adani Enterprises.
Adani Enterprises offers data center solutions in 6 major cities in India: Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, and Vizag.
True to form, these cities mostly run on Renewable Energy and are poised to support connectivity in the biggest market in the world next to China.
Larry Ellison built his fortune with Oracle, the world’s second largest software company. Despite dropping out of University, he was able to build a career as a computer programmer and was one of the first to use SQL (Structured Query Language) on a commercial scale which structures the way we retrieve and record data in a digital way.
Oracle continues to grow, buying up other companies like PeopleSoft, Siebel, Sun Microsystems, and the Cerner Corp.
Ellison takes real estate investing seriously and currently owns almost the entire island of Lanai in Hawaii where he has lived since 2012.
Steve Balmer may be known best as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, but he first made his fortune as Bill Gates’ 30th employee in Microsoft. He took over the helm from Bill Gates as CEO in 2000 and is known for the successful takeover of Skype.
He is also the largest shareholder in Microsoft, owning 4% of the biggest software company in the world.
Sergey Brin made his fortune as the co-founder of Google alongside Larry Page. He was the search engine’s President of Technology in 2001 and relinquished the role in 2019 to lead the invention of the Google Smart Glasses.
While you’d have to be living under a rock not to know what Google is, they did get another surge of mass relevance when they introduced the Google Suite, which goes beyond email to include online editing of documents and presentations as well as connectivity through video calls, among others.
This well-known founder of Google, like many tech startups, began in the University dorm room he shared with Sergey Brin (see number 5).
Alongside Google’s popularity as a search engine and the Google Suite (again, see, number 5), Google has grown by purchasing YouTube and Android Inc., the platform of all non-Apple gadgets.
The “Oracle of Omaha,” has a hardworking past and is equally known for his competitive spirit as he is one of the most business savvy self-made entrepreneurs on this list.
His business model is simple: buy undervalued companies, turn them around, and increase their value.
His company, Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. holds at least 63 companies in its portfolio, including household brands like Duracell, Fruit of the Loom, Kraft Heinz and See’s Candies.
While it may just be a smaller part of Warren Buffet’s highly diversified wealth, he is the largest shareholder of HP Inc. (one of the largest manufacturers of personal computers and digital printers), holding 11%. Approximately US $ 4.2 Billion of Warren Buffet’s portfolio comes from HP.
It’s interesting to note that Buffet may easily jump to first place but falls to 5th on the list due to his sizable donation of US $ 41 Billion to various philanthropy organizations including to his friend’s foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his children’s charities.
Just ahead of his good friend, Warren Buffet, is the original tech mogul, Bill Gates. While he has been controversial in recent years due to his high-profile divorce from Melinda Gates, this Harvard alumnus first conceived Microsoft with Paul Allen.
He also sits on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. and has invested most of his net worth in Cascade Investment LLC.
Cascade is known for big ticket stocks such as the Canadian National Railway and ownership of properties and the energy sector.
While some articles say that Bernard Arnault, the luxury goods mogul responsible for growing Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, and Bulgari, is the only billionaire in the top 10 without investments in technology, we beg to differ.
After all, the waning of luxury fashion has been forthcoming until Arnault embarked on a digital transformation which grew his business by 30% in 2018.
He may not have invested in information technology or the digital space as widely recognized, but it is definitely a backbone of his fortune.
Jeff Bezos began his career in the hedge fund industry and went on to build one of the first online bookstores, Amazon.com which later grew to become the go-to online retailer for pretty much everything.
The pressure and gains of being in the e-commerce industry became even more evident as the Pandemic restricted physical activity as Amazon posted a 76% percent jump in share prices.
Bezos also owns the Whole Foods franchise.
The richest man in the world could very well be bored as he continues to makes waves in the media for less than favorable reasons: his control over Twitter, an extra-marital affair with Johnny Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard, exchanging words with the World Food Programme, and even saying he’ll put back cocaine in Coke.
Like him or not, this South African-born American is a self-made man and first gained angel investors to invest in Zip2. He then built the first online payment gateways called X.com, the precursor of PayPal.
He is most commonly known as the CEO of Tesla which has been at the forefront of developing electric vehicles, and his foray (literally) into space through his company, Space X.
His jump in networth can be attributed to the increase in stock value of Tesla, 10% of which he owns, as well as his holdings in SpaceX.