The wealth of Silicon Valley billionaires will increase in 2022 as the share price of the world’s tech giants falls.
Here are some of the worst-hit tech stocks this year.
Elon Musk
After becoming the world’s richest man in 2021, the Tesla and SpaceX boss saw more than half of his net worth evaporate, adding French luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault to the top spot.
Elon Musk will lose $140 billion in 2022 due to the collapse of Tesla’s stock price, and his total worth is $130 billion, according to Bloombergindex of the richest people in the world.
Once a favorite of Wall Street investors, the electric car company’s future is now in question after Musk pushed through a $44 billion purchase of Twitter that many observers saw as an expensive distraction.
Musk largely financed the purchase by selling shares in Tesla, sending the stock price into a steeper spiral.
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook’s founders have put all their efforts into promoting the metaverse, but investors aren’t convinced that the world will go virtual any time soon.
The stock price of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, fell into the abyss in 2022.
Lack of confidence on Wall Street has sliced $81 billion from Zuckerberg’s fortune, to $44.4 billion as of December 28. Meta has faced stiff competition from breakout app TikTok and, like rival Google, has been hit by a morose advertising market as the world economy slumps amid high inflation.
Jeff Bezos
Since stepping down as Amazon’s chief executive in July 2021, Bezos has spent much of his time developing space exploration projects through his Blue Origin company.
But fortunes remain tied to the online retail giant’s share price, which is down more than 49% in 2022.
Bezos, who remains Amazon’s executive chairman, lost more than $86 billion last year, and is worth an estimated $106 billion. 58 year old entrepreneur and owner of Washington Post told CNN in November that he plans to donate most of his wealth to charity during his lifetime.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The two Google founders have not been at the helm of the company since 2019, but remain board members of parent company Alphabet, which also owns health, artificial intelligence and other subsidiaries.
Alphabet’s share price fell 39% last year, punished by declining online advertising revenues and increasing competition from Apple and Amazon.
Page’s wealth dropped to $46.1 billion and Brin’s dropped to $44.8 billion. They are still the 10th and 11th richest people on the planet, respectively Bloomberg.
Zhang Yiming
Chinese billionaires are further away from the tech debacle. The founder of TikTok-owner Bytedance sees his fortune grow to $10.4 billion by 2022. His net worth of $55 billion makes him the second richest person in China and the 23rd richest person in the world.
But storm clouds are coming for TikTok as political pressure mounts in Washington over accusations that the video-sharing app’s success has left the United States vulnerable to China. US version of the app. — AFP