Gates, Ellison, other tech moguls got richer last year
A look at Bloomberg's Billionaires Index shows a bump in wealth last year for a number of the usual suspects among technology leaders.
It's said that the rich get richer. And that's certainly true at the moment in the tech world.
Grabbing Bloomberg's No. 2 spot among the world's top billionaries, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has an estimated worth of $63.4 billion as of yesterday. Despite donating a hefty amount of money to charitable causes, Gates' net worth managed to rise 1.1 percent over the past year, making him the richest tech mogul on the list.
Worth $40.7 billion, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison saw a 3.6 percent gain in his fortune last year. The largest chunk of his wealth comes from his 23.5 percent share of Oracle, according to Bloomberg, though he also owns a 49 percent slice of software company NetSuite.
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos took the No. 20 spot with a net worth of $24.1 billion, a 2.4 percent gain from a year ago. Google's Larry Page is worth $21.8 billion, while fellow co-founder Sergey Brin has a fortune of $21.6 billion, both up 1.9 percent from last year.
The owner of India's Wipro, Azim Premji, is worth $15.8 billion. Other tech players on the list include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen with $14.4 billion to his name, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with $14.2 billion, and Dell CEO Michael Dell with $13.3 billion.
And despite the weak performance of Facebook's post-IPO stock, CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth rise by 5.1 percent from a year ago to $12.9 billion.
So who's No. 1 on the list? Worth $76.4 billion, Mexican mogul Carlos Slim Helu is the world's richest person with stakes in telecommunications, banking, mining, and several individual companies.
Bloomberg has published both the full list of 40 billionaires as well as the 10 tech billionaires.