Forbes released its list of the world’s billionaires and it looks like the U.S. tech billionaires took a pretty hefty hit from the economic crisis. The 40 tech billionaires we identified on the list collectively lost $81.5 billion compared to their standing in last year’s list. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.4 trillion in net worth that disappeared from the entire Forbes’ list, which also saw the total number of billionaires drop to 793 from 1,125, the first year-to-year decrease since 2003.
The tech billionaires are still collectively worth $203.4 billion. Although Bill Gates rose to the top of the list after falling to number 3 last year, the move was bittersweet. Gates lost a massive $18 billion in the past year. Larry Ellison from Oracle lost $2.5 billion but moved up 10 spots from last year, to number 4 on the list. Larry and Sergey from Google both took a hit of over $6 billion each. We also included some media moguls with technology-related businesses. Michael Bloomberg had a very good year. He rose nearly 50 spots on the list, with a gain of $5.5 billion. But News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch saw his net worth cut in half to $4 billion. Viacom’s Sumner Redstone plummeted down the list, from number 137 to number 701 on the list, losing $5.8 billion in the past year. Despite these massive losses in wealth, most of the big tech titans all made the list, including, Gates’ old partner Paul Allen , Michael Dell , and Steve Jobs . Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg didn’t make the list this year, however, with his estimated net worth dropping from $1.5 billion to $600 million. He’s still smiling though.
2009 Rank (2008)
Name (Company)
Net Worth
Change From 2008
#1 (#3)
William Gates III (Microsoft)
$40.0 billion
-$18.0 billion
#4 (#14)
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
$22.5 billion
-$2.5 billion
#17 (#65)
Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
$16 billion
+$5 billion
#29 (#40)
Michael Dell (Dell)
$12.3 billion
-$4.1 billion
#26 (#32)
Sergey Brin (Google)
$12 billion
-$6.7 billion
#26 (#33)
Larry Page (Google)
$11 billion
-$4 billion
#29 (#43)
Steven Ballmer (Microsoft)
$11 billion
-$4 billion
#32 (#41)
Paul Allen (Microsoft)
$10.5 billion
-$5.5 billion
#68 (#110)
Jeffrey Bezos (Amazon)
$6.8 billion
-$1.4 billion
#119 (#142)
Eric Schmidt (Google)
$4.4 billion
-$2.2 billion
#132 (#109)
Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.)
$4 billion
-$4.3 billion
#146 (#87)
Charles Ergen (EchoStar)
$3.9 billion
-$5.6 billion
#156 (#120)
Pierre Omidyar (Ebay)
$3.6 billion
-$4.4 billion
#178 (#189)
Steven Jobs (Apple)
$3.4 billion
-$2 billion
#196 (#236)
John Sall (SAS Institute)
$3.1 billion
-$1.3 billion
#205 (#277)
George Lucas (LucasArts)
$3.0 billion
-$0.9 billion
#246 (#288)
Gordon Moore (Intel)
$2.6 billion
-$1.1 billion
#261 (#462)
David Sun (Kingston Technologies)
$2.5 billion
0
#261 (#462)
John Tu (Kingston Technologies)
$2.5 billion
0
#296 (#446)
Mark Cuban (Broadcast.com)
$2.3 billion
-$0.3 billion
#296 (#307)
Ray Dolby (Dolby)
$2.3 billion
-$1.2 billion
#397 (#286)
Jeffrey Skoll (Ebay)
$1.8 billion
-$1.8 billion
#430 (#503)
William Randolph Hearst III (Media, Kleiner Perkins)
$1.7 billion
-$0.7 billion
#468 (#652)
Thomas Siebel (Siebel Systems)
$1.5 billion
-$0.4 billion
#522 (#605)
Andreas von Bechtolsheim (Sun, Google investor)
$1.4 billion
-$0.6 billion
#522 (#533)
Omid Kordestani (Google)
$1.4 billion
-$0.8 billion
#559 (#652)
Henry Samueli (Broadcom)
$1.3 billion
-$0.6 billion
#559 (#462)
Craig McCaw (McCaw Cellular)
$1.3 billion
-$1.2 billion
#559 (#743)
Irwin Jacobs (Qualcomm)
$1.3 billion
-$0.3 billion
#559 (#785)
Todd Wagner (Broadcast.com)
$1.3 billion
-$0.2 billion
#601 (#707)
L. John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins)
$1.2 billion
-$0.5 billion
#601 (#677)
Henry Nicholas III (Broadcom)
$1.2 billion
-$0.6 billion
#601 (#461)
David Filo (Yahoo)
$1.2 billion
-$1.3 billion
#647 (#785)
Vinod Khosla (Kleiner Perkins)
$1.1 billion
-$0.4 billion
#701 (#137)
Sumner Redstone (Viacom)
$1 billion
-$5.8 billion
#701 (#897)
Scott Cook (Intuit)
$1 billion
-$0.3 billion
#701 (#897)
David Duffield (PeopleSoft)
$1 billion
-$0.3 billion
#701 (#897)
Barry Diller (IAC)
$1 billion
-$0.3 billion
#701 (#847)
Richard Egan (EMC)
$1 billion
-$0.4 billion
#701 (#785)
Theodore Waitt (Gateway)
$1 billion
-$0.5 billion
40 names
Totals
$203.4 billion
-$81.5 billion
CrunchBase Information
Microsoft
Oracle Corporation
Bloomberg
Information provided by CrunchBase
