Top AI billionaires’ wealth surges to almost $1.5 trillion in 2024, led by Musk and Ellison

AI moguls’ fortunes have soared, with their combined assets reaching almost $1.49 trillion. The wealth rise for these tycoons could be tied to the persistent artificial intelligence craze and the growing focus of their parent companies on more development projects.

AI capitalists profit massively from the ongoing artificial intelligence craze

The AI craze has yet to slow down in 2024, boosting the fortunes of many big players in the industry. The overall net worth of the top 8 AI billionaires stands at $1.49 trillion today, up from around $745 billion a year ago — nearly double the amount. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has the highest cumulative assets, valued at $304 billion. Some analysts have even speculated that Tesla could soon be the top artificial intelligence firm in the next few years.

This month, Tesla even acquired an AI patent for developing a system that could adapt a neural network model on a hardware platform. With the new patent, the company may soon license its autonomous driving technology to third parties. Besides, Tesla is still refining its Optimus robot design, which Musk has predicted will be the “most popular product of any kind” due to its outstanding capabilities.

Following Musk is Oracle’s cofounder, Larry Ellison, who’s accumulated roughly $230.7 billion. Like Tesla, Oracle has expanded its market reach, earning support from generative AI applications for its cloud services.

The two top billionaires cumulatively account for 36% of the $1.486 trillion, while Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sanjay Brin, Jensen Huang, and Bill Gates make up for the rest.

Most of these CEOs added billions to their wealth in 2024

By April 2024, Meta was considered the most significant gainer among major AI  corporations, almost tripling its value. This came after it slashed about 25% of its workforce and still had multiple AI and metaverse developments lined up.

CEO Meta Mark Zuckerberg has added around $138.6 billion to his wealth since March 2023 and is currently valued at $203.8 billion. Moreover, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires’ list, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is almost hitting the $225 billion mark, roughly wealthier by $110.5 billion since March 2023.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have also each added over $65 billion to their wealth in the past year, while Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang augmented his wealth pool by over $106 billion.

Commenting at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Alexandre Fasel, State Secretary, Switzerland, said:

AI is amongst the key technologies of our time and will have a lasting impact on society, economies and politics and an important role to play in tackling the global challenges we face.

~Alexandre Fasel