Tech CEOs Have Lost More Than $300 Billion in 2022

Joaquin Victor Tacla, Tech Times 29 September 2022, 07:09 am

The economy has had a bleak year as a result of high inflation, recession woes, and abrupt stock market declines. Some of the biggest shocks have affected major companies, such as Meta's stock going down by about 58%.

Amazon and Google stock have also both decreased by about 30% year to date in 2022, according to Google Finance. However, several of the industry's billionaires have also incurred losses to their own fortunes due to the falling value of tech stocks.

(Photo : CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks up as he addresses guests at the Offshore Northern Seas 2022 (ONS) meeting in Stavanger, Norway on August 29, 2022. - The meeting, held in Stavanger from August 29 to September 1, 2022, presents the latest developments in Norway and internationally related to the energy, oil and gas sector

Collective Loss: $315 Billion

As reported first by Vox, Forbe's annual top 400 richest Americans imply that tech billionaires have collectively lost $315 billion since 2021.

But Vox argued that Tech leaders are still doing fine despite the economic turmoil that tech organizations are currently experiencing. Most of these billionaires still have more money than before the pandemic.

According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos, the man who founded Amazon, will have a net worth of roughly $151 billion in 2022 after suffering a $50 billion loss. However, it is worth noting that he still has $32 billion more in his bank account today than he did in 2019, when he only had $115 billion.

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, lost $28 billion, yet he still has a net worth of $106 billion, making him more wealthy than he was before the pandemic, while Google founder Sergey Brin is still $35.5 billion wealthier compared to 2019.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is classified under "automotive" under Forbes' criteria, whereas Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Meta, is classified under "media & entertainment."

However, out of the 65 tech-billionaires on the Forbes 400, 56 are wealthier now than they were in 2019, despite ongoing market challenges.

This includes billionaires such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

Zuckerberg Stands Out

However, Zuckerberg stands out in the crop of pandemic gains after losing almost $77 billion in 2021 and has a current net worth of $57.7 billion, which is a 17 percent decrease from $69.6 billion in 2019. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz's wealth has decreased as well, going from $11.6 billion in 2019 to $8.1 billion in 2022.

Due to fewer virtual meetings and more employees returning to the office, Zoom's founder, Eric Yuan, has also experienced financial losses.

However, given how much Zoom's value has decreased from a peak price of $588.84 a share in October 2020 to its current trading price of about $75-it isn't a disastrous long-term loss, according to Vox.

The majority of tech billionaires have increased their wealth during the past three years. Elon Musk is the best illustration of this since his net worth had significantly climbed by 242 percent by the end of 2020 compared to the previous year even though there were still COVID-19 lockdowns in place during that period.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla