Do you know who are the richest Tech Billionaires in the world in 2020? Read on to find out.
Who’s the richest person in the world? Jeff Bezos. Who’s the 3rd richest? Bill Gates. 5th? Mark Zuckerberg. 6th? Larry Ellison. And the list goes on…
What I’m trying to say is that the tech industry has created a lot of rich people very rapidly and the list is only growing. So, we decided to compile this list to familiarize you with the 20 richest tech Billionaires in the world in 2020.
The rankings in this list comes from Forbes real-time Billionaires as of January 4th, 2020. So, it may differ from present ranking which you can find in the Top 15 richest people in the world list.
From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, these are the 20 Richest tech Billionaires in 2020:
20. Zhang Zhidong – $13.6 Billion
Zhang Zhidong is the co-founder, former CTO and 2nd largest individual shareholder of Tencent Holdings Limited.
19. Shiv Nadar – $14.93 Billion
Shiv Nadar is the Founder and Chairman of HCL technologies. It is the third largest Information Technology and consulting company in India after Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.
18. William Ding – $15.6 Billion
William Ding also known as Ding Lei is the Founder and CEO of NetEase. It is a Chinese Internet technology company providing online services around content, commerce, community, and communications.
17. Dietmar Hopp & Family – $16.1 Billion
Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, and his colleagues started a company called SAP SE (Systems, Applications, and Products). The company provides enterprise software to corporations to manage business operations and customer relations.
16. Hasso Plattner & Family – $16.2 Billion
Hasso Plattner, Dietmar Hopp, and his colleagues started a company called SAP SE (Systems, Applications, and Products). The company provides enterprise software to corporations to manage business operations and customer relations. Plattner is currently the chairman of SAP SE.
15. Zhang Yiming – $16.2 Billion
Zhang Yiming is founder of Bytedance. He also developed news aggregator platform Toutiao and the famous video sharing platform TikTok. His company is rated the most valuable startup in the world with a net worth of more than $75 Billion.
14. Elon Musk – $19.22 Billion
I know Tesla is a car company, SpaceX is a space Exploration company and the Boring company is a tunnel infrastructure company. But, this is my list and I can add whoever I want. Just Kidding.
Elon’s journey is quite interesting and after knowing it, you’ll be happy with my decision to include him in the list of richest tech Billionaires in 2020. At the age of 12, he developed a game and sold it for $500. Then in 1995, after graduating he started Zip2 that developed and marketed an internet city guide for Newspaper publishing industry. The company was then sold to Compaq for $341 Million in February of 1999. Musk received $22 Million for his 7% share in the sale. A month later he co-founded x.com, an e-mail based payments company. A year later it merged with Confinity. The company had a similar online payments service called PayPal. To focus on the payments business it was later renamed to PayPal.
In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 Billion out of which Musk’s share was $165 Milion. Even before the sale of PayPal Musk was obsessed with getting humans to Mars. But, the price of a Rocket looked very costly to him. According to Musk, the price of components of a Rocket were only about 3% of the cost. Having done the math, he decided to build his own Rockets.
A Quote from Elon Musk : “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
After the PayPal sale Musk used his hundreds of millions of dollars to start SpaceX. Then, in 2004 he invested heavily in Tesla and became its Chairman. Having shuffled through different companies Musk had finally found his love in SpaceX and Tesla. So much so that he said he’d be the last person to cash out of Tesla but clarified that it would only be done to fund SpaceX’s mars colonisation missions.
Even Musk himself though that he would fail, which he did, multiple times. But the law of averages kicked in and… he did the impossible. Okay, it wasn’t the law of averages. It was their hard work that paid off and if we ever become space faring civilisations (which we certainly will) you know whom to thank. I really think that we need more people like Elon Musk.
13. Masayoshi Son – $22.63 Billion
Masayoshi Son is the founder of SoftBank. Son uses his company as an investment vehicle for stakes in various tech companies.
SoftBank has 100% stake in ARM Holdings (75% through Softbank and 25% through Vision Fund), a British semiconductor and software design company which designs most of the chips used in modern day smartphones and tablets.
Other big investments of the company includes Sprint Corporation, Alibaba Group, Yahoo Japan, Brightstar Corp.
12. Azim Premji – $22.6 Billion
Azim Premji is the Founder and Chairman of Wipro. He is informally known as the Czar of Indian IT industry.
After his retirement he Donated two-thirds of his wealth amounting to $21 Billion to charity. He was applauded by Bill Gates who said that Premji had been his inspiration in philanthropy and his donations will make a huge impact.
Although his net worth has been reduced to about a Billion Dollar we thought it wouldn’t do justice to exclude him from the list.
11. Laurene Powell Jobs – $24.40 Billion
Laurene is the wife of deceased Steve Jobs. He co-founded Apple Computers (now: Apple Inc.) in a Garage in 1976 with Steve Wozniak. Laurene Powell Jobs is one of the Richest Women in the world. But, she would’ve been the 2nd richest person if it wasn’t for Steve who sold his 11% stake in Apple Inc. after he was fired from the company.
Those 11% Apple shares alone would’ve been worth more than $100 Billion today. Add to that about $5 Billion worth Disney shares that she owns, and she could’ve been richer than Bill Gates.
10. Michael Dell – $31.20 Billion
Michael Dell is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Dell technologies. It is one of the largest technology infrastructure companies in the world.
In 2013, Michael Dell took Dell Inc. private for a whopping $24.4 Billion (in the biggest management buyout since Great Recession). But, the company again went public in December, 2018.
9. Ma Huateng – $43.20 Billion
Ma Huateng also known as Pony Ma is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tencent. It is Asia’s most valuable company and one of the largest internet & technology companies in the world. Tencent is also involved in gaming and entertainment industries. The popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) game is published to android store by Tencent.
8. Jack Ma – $43.50 Billion
Jack Ma is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in China. Alibaba is an e-commerce, Internet, and technology company. It is the equivalent of Amazon in China.
7. Steve Ballmer – $57.50 Billion
Steve Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft from the year 2000-2014. He was hired at Microsoft by Bill Gates in 1980. Currently he is the Governor of Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
6. Sergey Brin – $59.40 Billion
Sergey Brin co-founded Google (now: Alphabet Inc.) with Larry Page. He and Page co-developed page rank algorithm which is used by Google to rank its search results. Brin is currently the president of Alphabet Inc. which is the parent company of Google. Scroll down to read about Larry Page.
5. Larry Page – $61.60 Billion
Larry Page is the Co founder of Google. (now: Alphabet Inc.) He and Sergey Brin co-developed page rank algorithm which is used by Google to rank its search results. Page is currently the CEO of Alphabet Inc. which is the organised parent company of Google.
4. Larry Ellison – $66.50 Billion
Larry Ellison is the co-founder, Executive Chairman, and Chief Technology Officer of Oracle Corporation. If you’ve worked with Computers you must have heard about Oracle Database. It’s primary business involves selling of database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products.
3. Mark Zuckerberg – $77.30 Billion
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder of Facebook, the biggest social media website in the world. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of Facebook. His salary is just $1 per year, but he is the 5th richest person in the world thanks to his 28% ownership of Facebook shares.
He launched Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4th, 2004. Back then he studied at Harvard University. Zuckerberg had initially limited the users to his own university. But, later allowed other university students to join the network, and eventually opened it for the general public.
After its success Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to lead Facebook. He became a billionaire at the age of 23 in 2008, (world record for youngest billionaire at that time). Later in 2017, he received an honorary degree from Harvard.
2. Bill Gates – $108.50 Billion
Bill Gates is the Co founder of Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world. Presently he co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
His investments are managed by Michael Larson through Cascade Investments L.L.C. where Bill himself is the CEO. Apart from that he is also a board member of Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft Corporation.
He reportedly admitted recently that his biggest regret was letting Google win the smartphone OS market share. Gates said: “The greatest mistake ever is the… whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is.”
1. Jeff Bezos & Family – $116.20 Billion
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world with a net-worth of over $150 Billion. He is the Chairman, CEO, and president of Amazon and most of the wealth he has, comes from his stake in the company.
He founded Amazon in 1994 as an online book store. Although things were hard for him and Amazon during the 2000 dot-com bubble burst, its expansion has been unprecedented and their business is growing rapidly now. Last year Amazon’s profit was about $12 Billion, up by 300% from its previous year.
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