unusual_whales, citing Bloomberg, says the world's roughly 100 tech billionaires added a record $845 billion through September
Tech billionaires are pulling away from the rest of the ultra-rich. The world’s ~100 tech billionaires added a record $845 billion through September, per Bloomberg, driven by the AI boom. Their combined fortune: $4.6 trillion. Every other billionaire combined? Down $62 billion. Elon Musk alone gained $310 billion, about 40% of the entire index’s increase.
Context
The AI boom is concentrating wealth in a small group of tech founders, while other billionaires lost ground.
This is a secondhand summary of Bloomberg Billionaires Index figures that Bloomberg published on October 5, so the post resurfaces data that is about two weeks old. The figures match Bloomberg's reporting.
Deep dive
On October 18, unusual_whales posted that tech billionaires are pulling away from the rest of the ultra rich. It said the world's roughly 100 tech billionaires added a record $845 billion through September, per Bloomberg, driven by the AI boom, for a combined fortune of $4.6 trillion, while every other billionaire combined was down $62 billion. It added that Elon Musk alone gained $310 billion, about 40% of the entire index's increase.
Bloomberg reported those figures on October 5. It said the roughly 100 technology fortunes among the world's 500 richest people gained $845 billion through September 30, the most ever for the first nine months of a year, and now account for 36% of the index's wealth despite being about a fifth of its members.
Quartz, summarizing Bloomberg, wrote that Americans accounted for 94% of the index's net gains and that since September 10 all 10 of the world's richest people have been from the US, a first since Bloomberg began tracking in 2012. It said Musk briefly became the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX and xAI merged and went public in June, and that Michael Dell's wealth rose 81% to $254 billion.
Bloomberg also reported signs the peak has passed. The combined wealth of the 500 richest peaked at $13.4 trillion in mid June and has since fallen 6% to $12.6 trillion, as investors grew skeptical of some leading AI names.
What to expect next
Watch the Bloomberg index for the fourth quarter, since the combined wealth of the richest has already fallen from its June peak as AI stocks cooled.
Also watch how the gap between tech and other fortunes feeds political debates over taxes and the gains from AI, including pledges such as Anthropic's new Public Benefit Fund. Large private valuations and stock moves will keep driving these totals.