Top-5 IT billionaires
Many of billionaires found their fortune in the tech industry. Many of the names may look familiar, while other may be a bit of a surprise. In addition, it is always interesting to see how much money these billionaires actually have and how they earned their wealth – each of them have their own story of how they rose to the occasion and earn their place.
This list of the 10 richest tech billionaires in the world comes from a collaboration between Business Insider and wealth analytics firm Wealth-X which recently created a list of the top 50 richest people on Earth.
5 richest tech billionaires are from US and some of them are collage dropouts.
Bill Gates
Net worth: $89.4 billion
Country: US
Industry: Tech
Source of wealth: Self-made; Microsoft
Bill Gates isn't just the wealthiest person on this list — he's the wealthiest person on Earth. He started making all that money early; at 30, he became a billionaire when Microsoft went public. He co-founded the company and ran it for years, eventually stepping down as CEO in 2000. He retains a position on the company's board, but largely focuses his time on philanthropic work.
Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $51.2 billion
Country: US
Industry: Tech
Source of wealth: Self-made; Amazon.com
From humble beginnings in his garage, Jeff Bezos became a billionaire through making it easy to buy and sell things online. First it was books, then it was literally everything else. He's moved from focusing only on his behemoth online retail operation, Amazon, to other stuff, like owning newspapers (the Washington Post) and putting rockets into space (Blue Origin).
Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $46.2 billion
Country: US
Industry: Technology
Source of wealth: Self-made; Facebook
He developed Facebook while in college at Harvard, dropped out of school to launch it and never looked back.
He's 31 now, and his wife recently gave birth to their first child. He's also worth just shy of $50 billion.
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $46.1 billion
Country: US
Industry: Tech
Source of wealth: Self-made; Oracle
Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle Corp., one of the world's largest software companies. The company is second only to Microsoft is software use worldwide.
Ellison was at one time the most highly paid CEO in the world. He owns a Hawaiian island (Lanai), has been married and divorced four times, and he was good friends with Steve Jobs.
Larry Page
Net worth: $37.8 billion
Country: US
Industry: Technology
Source of wealth: Self-made; Google
Larry Page is the slightly more wealthy half of the duo who founded Google. Page is CEO of Alphabet, Google's new parent company, while Sergey Brin fills the role of president (Sundar Pinchai now runs Google as CEO).
Page become a billionaire at the age of 30, and led the acquisition of Android by Google. Though he stepped down from Google leadership for a decade, he resumed the position of CEO in 2011 and has only grown the company in the years since.
