The year 2021 has proved to be extremely lucrative for the world’s richest people, with their combined wealth skyrocketing by a staggering $1.5 trillion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This marks a significant reversal from the $1.4 trillion lost by billionaires on last year’s list.
Leading the way among these fortunate individuals is Elon Musk, the tech billionaire famous for his companies including Tesla and SpaceX. Musk’s wealth grew by an astounding $95.4 billion this year, bringing his net worth to a whopping $232 billion. This remarkable increase can be attributed mainly to his 12.95% stake in Tesla, which saw a massive year-to-date gain of 134.21%.
Despite this impressive growth for Musk and Tesla, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses for the billionaire’s other business ventures. One of his companies, X, formerly known as Twitter, faced a significant challenge as several blue-chip advertisers left the platform amid allegations of rampant antisemitic content proliferating the site. Analysts have projected a $2.5 billion drop in X’s advertising sales due to this controversy.
Apart from Musk, several other tech billionaires saw their fortunes rise sharply, thanks to the sector’s remarkable growth this year, driven by the boom in artificial intelligence. One such individual is Mark Zuckerberg, who heads the company Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Despite Musk and Zuckerberg almost having a “cage match” earlier this year, the Facebook CEO’s net worth rose by $84 billion this year, taking him to the sixth spot on the list with a net worth of $130 million.
Another tech icon who enjoyed impressive growth is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Bezos’s net worth surged by $71.3 billion this year, taking him to the third position on the list, with a net worth of $178 billion.
Overall, the year 2021 has been a remarkable one in terms of wealth creation for the world’s wealthiest people, with the tech sector leading the way. However, this growth has not been without controversies, as exemplified by the X debacle that caused a significant blow to Twitter’s ad sales and left analysts pondering on whether the social media giant can weather this storm.
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