The Richest American Tech Billionaires In 2023 (2024)

Artificial intelligence and massive cost cutting drove up tech fortunes by $300 billion. But some people did much better than others, as just four techies, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, rose a combined $155 billion.

By Phoebe Liu, Forbes Staff

Last year, America’s richest tech billionaires were reeling. They had lost a collective $315 billion in wealth as interest rates soared and markets turned bearish about the once high-flying sector.

A year later, they’ve nearly made it all back.

The tech tycoons on the 2023 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the U.S. have gained a combined $300 billion in net worth since fall 2022, largely thanks to a wave of investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. In all, 69 members of The Forbes 400 made their fortunes in technology, compared to 65 last year. More than three-fourths of them are richer than they were in 2022.

AI optimism has swung markets much in the same way the internet did in the 1990s and the cloud did in the 2010s. The stock prices of tech giants such as Oracle, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Dell, which are becoming increasingly reliant on AI, have reflected that enthusiasm and, in turn, inflated their leaders’ net worths. Just four people—Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell—are a combined $155 billion richer.

The Forbes 400’s Biggest Tech Gainers, In Dollar Terms

Nothing embodies the AI surge better than Huang’s Nvidia, the graphics chip giant that powers the majority of AI systems. The company’s shares soared 234% since last fall—pushing Nvidia past a trillion-dollar market capitalization in June and dwarfing the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 10.4% increase, the S&P 500’s 13.6% rally and the Nasdaq’s 18.3% jump. In doing so, cofounder and CEO Huang’s net worth jumped 216%, the biggest percentage gain of anyone on The Forbes 400, landing him among America’s 20 richest people for the first time, at No. 17. Huang, who was worth $12.9 billion last year, is now worth an estimated $40.7 billion.

“A new computing era has begun,” Huang declared in an August earnings call, when Nvidia posted record second quarter revenues of $13.5 billion, beating analyst predictions by the largest amount Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon has seen in his career, he says. Some analysts, notably New Constructs CEO David Trainer, have decried Nvidia’s AI boom as a bubble. Tigress’ Ivan Feinseth says companies like Tesla and Meta are purchasing Nvidia processors “as fast as it can produce them,” hypothesizing that the demand is real but will eventually cool, although Rasgon thinks that won’t happen anytime soon. Regardless of how long the surge lasts, though, one thing is clear: “Nvidia clearly is the poster child for the AI boom,” as S&P Global’s Andrew Chang puts it, “but other companies are benefiting and will benefit meaningfully from AI.”

The world’s largest tech companies have been making other moves that pleased investors too, driving the firms’ share prices up. After a fantastical year of zero interest rates, seemingly high spending and exponential hiring, several tech giants reined it in and channeled what Zuckerberg called a “year of efficiency” for Meta. For almost all of the top 10 tech gainers’ companies (Nvidia is a notable exception), that meant layoffs, including 21,000 for Meta, 27,000 for Amazon, 12,000 for Alphabet, 10,000 for Microsoft and 6,650 for Dell.

Here are the ten Tech billionaires whose estimated net worths increased the most this year, in dollar terms

Comparisons are between September 2, 2022 and September 8, 2023

Larry Ellison

Worth: $158 Billion | Change vs. 2022: +$57 billion | Source Of Wealth: Oracle

In absolute terms, no one in America has gotten richer this year than Ellison, who’s $57 billion better off after a 47% rise in shares of his software firm, Oracle. “Generative AI is changing everything,” Ellison said on a September earnings call, adding that Oracle has $4 billion of contracts related to AI training. In June, Ellison—the company’s founder, chief technology officer and 40% shareholder—took the opportunity to cash out about $640 million (pretax) worth of stock options, the first time he’s sold shares in two years.

Mark Zuckerberg

Net worth: $106 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$48.3 billion | Source of wealth: Facebook

Zuckerberg turns 40 next year, and he and Meta are “growing up.” After a terrible 2022 for Meta—with a collapsing share price, crumbling profits and substantial fourth-quarter layoffs—a share price U-turn boosted Zuck’s fortune by $48.3 billion this year, to $106 billion (although it’s still $29 billion away from his 2021).

Jensen Huang

Net worth: $40.7 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$27.8 billion | Source of wealth: Semiconductors

Nvidia produces more of the chips used for artificial intelligence systems than anyone else. Investors have pushed shares up more than 200% since last year’s ranking, and optimistic analysts say the newly-crowned trillion-dollar company doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon. The Taiwan-born Oregon State graduate founded Nvidia in 1993, took it public in 1999 and has the company logo tattooed on his bicep.

Michael Dell

Net worth: $71.5 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$21.5 billion | Source of wealth: Dell Technologies

Largely thanks to an insatiable demand for servers from AI companies and possible inclusion in the S&P 500, shares of Dell Technologies are up 87% since last year. Dell is also in line for a potential $20 billion payday in October, when Dell’s cloud computing spinoff VMware is set to sell to semiconductor giant Broadcom for $61 billion after receiving regulatory approval in August. It’s just the latest deal for Dell, who has shepherded the company he started as a teenager through multiple restructurings, including two IPOs 30 years apart.

Larry Page

Net worth: $114 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$21 billion | Source of wealth: Google

Sergey Brin

Net worth: $110 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$21 billion | Source of wealth: Google

Google’s 25th anniversary year was a lucrative one for cofounders Page and Brin, who are each $21 billion richer this year, thanks to a 26% jump in the shares of Google parent company Alphabet. In May, the low-profile cofounders attracted some unwanted attention as the target of subpoenas from the U.S. Virgin Islands over an alleged connection with Jeffrey Epstein, about which they have not commented. Brin is also turning his focus to AI, returning to the tech giant in his most hands-on role in years working on Google’s AI efforts. Page and Brin both stepped down from day-to-day roles in 2019 but remain on Alphabet’s board.

Steve Ballmer

Net worth: $101 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$18 billion | Source of wealth: Microsoft

The former CEO of Microsoft, which he ran from 2000 to 2014, is mostly focused on the Los Angeles Clippers these days, including spearheading construction of a $2 billion, ultra-luxe new arena for his NBA team. “This stuff is all fun,” he told Forbes earlier this year. “And I don’t have a bunch of shareholders to worry about.” But he still owns enough Microsoft stock to push his net worth up an estimated $18 billion this year.

Jeff Bezos

Net worth: $161 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$10 billion | Source of wealth: Amazon

The Amazon founder hasn’t been the richest person in America since 2021, but he’s still the richest American in tech. (Forbes categorizes Elon Musk, whose fortune is mostly tied up in shares of electric carmaker Tesla, as primarily being an automotive billionaire.) Amazon’s share price is rebounding, thanks in part to higher profits and cost-cutting measures, including 27,000 layoffs within the year. So is Bezos: In May, he reportedly got engaged to Lauren Sánchez, a former L.A. TV anchor whose apparent likeness he had carved onto the prow of his new 417-foot sailing yacht, Koru.

Net worth: $16.2 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$8.6 billion | Source of wealth: Warehouse automation

The billionaire behind Walmart’s warehouse robots saw his fortune rise 113% this year thanks mostly to soaring share prices for Symbotic (his company named for the symbiotic relationship between warehousing and robots). In July, on the heels of a record quarterly earnings release, Symbotic announced a joint venture with SoftBank to rent warehouses equipped with Symbotic-powered AI robots to supply chain companies. Cohen called the project, which is set to begin rollout in 2024, a “realization of a vision I’ve had for many years to bring AI-enabled automation to companies of all sizes.” The rest of Cohen’s fortune comes from his family’s grocery distribution business, C&S Wholesale Grocery, the nation’s eighth largest private company.

Bill Gates

Net worth: $111 billion | Change vs. 2022: +$5 billion | Source of wealth: Microsoft

Like everyone else, Gates is going all-in on AI, penning a letter in March calling the technology “as revolutionary as mobile phones and the internet.” In June, Gates joined a $1.3 billion funding round for AI chatbot startup Inflection.ai. He personally invested alongside Microsoft, which has been benefiting from its own early bets on artificial intelligence, including a stake in ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Shareholders are bullish, too, driving up Microsoft stock by 31% over the past year.

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The Richest American Tech Billionaires In 2023 (2024)

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