Thursday was a bad day to be a tech boss.
The world’s nine wealthiest tech titans saw just over $150 billion wiped from their combined fortunes in a single day due to a frenzied rout in AI and chip stocks.
The Nasdaq 100 plunged into a correction, posting a more than 6% drop and its worst day since the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors sold off tech stocks in anticipation of Democrats reining in AI and data-center spending after winning control of the House and Senate in the US midterm elections this week.
Elon Musk took the biggest hit to his net worth as Tesla stock tanked 11% and SpaceX stock tumbled 9% on the day. The richest man on the planet saw his wealth shrink by about $80 billion, or over 9%, to $785 billion.
Michael Dell‘s net worth fell by over 9% as well, dropping by about $19 billion to settle at $190 billion, as Dell Technologies stock plummeted 15%.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang saw his fortune shrink by 9% or around $15 billion, to $151 billion, as the AI chipmaker’s stock slid 9%.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison took a 6% hit to his net worth, which fell by $10 billion to $158 billion. That was fueled by a 7% drop in Oracle stock.
Their peers saw less dramatic declines. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth fall by nearly 4%, or about $8 billion, to $215 billion.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took a 3% hit, or roughly $6 billion, trimming his net worth to $188 billion, as Microsoft stock slumped by about 4%.
Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saw declines of less than 2% or below $5 billion, as Alphabet and Amazon retreated by a little over 2% each.
Taken together, these nine tech leaders saw $152 billion erased from their collective wealth in a single day. But it’s worth underscoring that they all ranked among the 15 richest people on Earth at Thursday’s market close, and many remained wealthier than 12 months prior, thanks to a historic boom in AI stocks.
Musk was still up $312 billion. Bezos was up $100 billion, Dell was up $31 billion, and Ballmer was up $13 billion.
However, Ellison’s net worth was down by $152 billion or 49%, and Huang was down about $19 billion or 11%. Zuckerberg was also in the red for the past 12 months, while Page and Brin were up less than 1%.
Several of these tech bosses were poised to recoup some of their wealth declines on Friday. As of 6:30 a.m. ET, Nvidia, SpaceX, and Oracle shares were higher in premarket trading.
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