This year’s artificial intelligence boom has taken tech stocks and billionaires’ fortunes to new heights, Quartz notes.
While everyone was discussing Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, a maker of artificial intelligence chips, other tech billionaires were also getting richer.
Quartz talks about four billionaires whose fortunes are growing thanks to AI.
Jensen Huang
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s fortune skyrocketed during the AI boom as demand grew for his company’s chips, which are used in the world’s most popular AI models.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Huang’s fortune has grown by $63.5 billion this year to $107 billion. Most of Huang’s fortune comes from his 3.5 per cent stake in Nvidia, according to Bloomberg.
In September, Nvidia returned to the $3 trillion market capitalisation club thanks to a rise in its share price, boosting Huang’s fortune by about $2.3 billion.
Nvidia shares hit an all-time high in June and have since gone through a period of some volatility. They have added about 158% since the beginning of the year, and Nvidia shares are up more than 180% year-to-date.
In June, Nvidia briefly surpassed Apple in terms of total market capitalisation and crossed the $3 trillion threshold for the first time. A few weeks later, Nvidia overtook Apple and Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable public company. Although Nvidia has since returned to third place, it remains the most valuable semiconductor company in the world. In February, it became the first semiconductor company to reach $2 trillion in value after reporting record profits for the fourth quarter of 2023.
Michael Dell
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell’s fortune has grown by $31.6 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.According to Bloomberg, most of Dell’s net worth of $110 billion comes from his stake in the computer company, of which he owns about half.
The company’s stock is up about 58.4 per cent this year. In March, Dell beat analysts’ expectations for fourth-quarter earnings, driven by demand for AI optimisation in its server business.
‘Our AI-optimised servers continue to gain traction, with orders up nearly 40% year-over-year and backlog nearly doubling, ending our fiscal year at $2.9 billion,’ Jeff Clark, Dell’s vice chairman and chief operating officer, said in the earnings report.
Clark emphasised that Dell is just beginning to embrace AI. He believes that with its broad portfolio, the company can help customers create generative AI solutions that meet performance, cost and security requirements.
Clark said in August that ‘the pace of AI development at Dell accelerated’ in the second quarter, and that the company was ‘seeing an increase in the number of enterprise customers buying AI solutions each quarter.’
‘Demand for AI-optimised servers was $3.2 billion, up 23% from the previous quarter and $5.8 billion YTD,’ Clark said, referring to the second quarter.
Mark Zuckerberg
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the fortune of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta (recognised as extremist and banned in Russia), has grown by $78.1bn this year. For a while, Zuckerberg surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the second richest person in the world according to Bloomberg. Zuckerberg’s fortune reached $206bn.
According to Forbes’ list of billionaires, Zuckerberg is the third richest person in the world with a fortune of $204.3bn.
Meta shares are up about 69.5 per cent this year. They jumped 5% in July after the company announced second-quarter results that beat expectations.
‘We had a successful quarter, Meta AI could be the world’s most popular AI assistant by the end of the year,’ Zuckerberg said in a statement. – ‘We released our first open source AI model, our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses continue to gain popularity, and our apps are growing nicely.’
Larry Ellison
In September, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s fortune surpassed that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, making Ellison the second richest person in the world. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, the Oracle CEO is the fifth richest person in the world.
Oracle shares are up about 62.7 per cent this year, thanks to its cloud business. Ellison owns just under 40% of Oracle stock, according to Forbes.
‘As cloud services became Oracle’s largest business, our operating income and earnings per share growth accelerated,’ Oracle CEO Safra Catz emphasised in a statement after announcing first-quarter results.
The company’s total quarterly revenue in U.S. dollars grew 7 per cent year-on-year, while revenue at constant prices increased 8 per cent, the report said. Oracle’s cloud services division revenue in U.S. dollars was up 12 per cent year-on-year and revenue in constant prices was up 22 per cent.
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