The heavy storm which shook the tech market continues to have a spiralling effect into the middle of the year, resulting in a significant decline in the net worth of tech founders.
Over the past few months, tech firms, and by extension, tech founders having a large percentage of their net worth tied to the amount of share in big companies have seen their valuations slashed in both the public and private markets.
Inferring from the Bloomberg Billionaire index, these four tech founders: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have lost a respective $55.6 billion, $21.4 billion, $23.5 billion and $23 billion.
In total, this amount to a combined value of $123.5 billion lost from the beginning of the year till date.
Jeff Bezos
With a current net worth of $137 billion, the founder of Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has lost $55.6 billion year to date.
While he stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman in July last year, he sold $8.8 billion worth of his Amazon stock the same year and also gave some shares.
The billionaire also owns ‘The Washington Post’ and ‘Blue Origin’, an aerospace company developing rockets which he said he funds through the sale of about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock.
Bill Gates
The co-founder of Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, currently has a net worth of $117 billion. In 2022, the billionaire has lost $21.4 billion year to date.
Notably, the majority of Gate’s fortune is derived from Cascade Investment, a holding company that was created with the proceeds of Microsoft stock sales and dividends.
Larry Page
At $105 billion current net worth, Page, the co-founder of Alphabet, the holding company for Google has lost $23.5 billion year to date.
He was CEO until 2001, when Eric Schmidt took over, and from 2011 until 2015, when was the CEO of Google’s new parent company Alphabet.
Page stepped down as CEO of Alphabet in December 2019 but remains a board member and a controlling shareholder.
Sergey Brin
Brin who co-founded Alphabet with page is currently valued at $101 billion. The billionaire founder has lost $23 billion year to date.
While Brin stepped down as president of Alphabet, the parent company of Google in December 2019, he still remains a controller shareholder and a board member.
