It wouldn’t be wrong if we say that 2026 has been a great year for tech billionaires. Statistics are telling a similar story. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the net worth of about 100 tech billionaires, among the world’s 500 richest people, increased by $845 billion as of September 30. This is the largest ever increase in the first 9 months of any year.

The reasons behind this surge were the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the tremendous rise in the shares of technology companies. The total wealth of the tech billionaires is now $4.6 trillion. They account for only one-fifth of the total people included in the index, but account for 36 percent of the index’s total assets.

The difference is obvious. Billionaires who made their wealth from sectors other than technology lost a total of $62 billion during the period, while American billionaires accounted for 94 percent of the total gains in the index. As of September 10, all 10 of the world’s richest people are from the US — the first time since Bloomberg began tracking billionaires in 2012.

Which tech billionaires’ wealth increased?

Only the rich have benefited the most. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, added $310 billion to his wealth as of the end of September this year, about 40 percent of the index’s total increase. After SpaceX merged with his artificial intelligence company xAI and went public in June, he briefly became the world’s first trillionaire.

9 of the 10 richest people in the world owe their wealth to American tech companies. Dell Technologies Inc. founder Michael Dell’s net worth rose 81 percent to $254 billion. Mark Zuckerberg added $23 billion to his net worth this year. Meta Platforms Inc. in September. After launching their new Muse personal AI assistant — their best month in nearly four years — rose 27%.

signs of weakness

1. The combined wealth of the world’s 500 richest people peaked at $13.4 trillion in mid-June. Since then, it has fallen 6 percent to $12.6 trillion due to a broader market slowdown and growing skepticism about some big AI companies.
2. The huge debt fueling the AI ​​ambitions of big tech companies is making some investors nervous. Larry Ellison briefly became the world’s richest man in September 2025, when Oracle Corp. announced a massive increase in its AI-linked cloud infrastructure business, boosting his net worth by $89 billion in a single day.
3. A year later, Ellison’s net worth is down $196 billion, while Oracle’s credit-default swaps are trading near record highs. The biggest reason for this is that investors are hesitant about the massive debt required to build AI infrastructure.
4. This increase in the wealth of billionaires has also fueled calls for higher taxes on the very rich. California voters will decide in November whether to impose a wealth tax on the state’s billionaires, while states such as Washington, New York, Illinois and Rhode Island have also discussed imposing new taxes on wealthy residents.
5. The rapidly increasing number of young and tech-savvy people among the ultra-wealthy makes it hard to imagine that the next big wealth shift will be driven primarily by aging baby boomers passing their fortunes to their heirs.
6. “We talk a lot about large transfers of wealth — but some of the top 100 or 1,000 richest people may be older and run traditional businesses, but many of them are young tech entrepreneurs,” said James Mazo, an economist in the chief investment office of UBS Group AG. “I wonder to what extent this will increase wealth accumulation.

New wealth

1. While the leaders of big tech companies have made huge fortunes thanks to the boom in AI, the newcomers to Bloomberg’s list show that because of the boom, startup founders and owners of companies that supply AI infrastructure are also getting rich.
2. In June, when AI company Anthropic PBC completed a funding round with a $965 billion valuation, all seven of its co-founders joined the rich list. Founders of Chinese companies also participated, such as Minimax Group Inc. Yan Junzhi of Deepsea and Liang Wenfeng of Deepsea can be named among the pioneers.
3. Businesses that supply hardware and infrastructure for AI have also benefited from this momentum. Lin Sung-chi, founder of King Slide, a Taiwanese company that makes server rails and cable management systems for data centers, made the list this year with a net worth of $9.5 billion.
4. He started this company four decades ago. Wang Xin, chairperson of Guangdong DTech Technology Co., also joined the wealth index. Because of AI, demand for special drill bits (used in circuit board assembly) made by his company increased.
5. Two heirs to Samsung Electronics Co.’s Lee family – Boo-jin and Seo-hyun – also joined the list due to demand for the company’s memory chips. A surge in Samsung’s share price after former chairman Lee Kun-hee’s death in 2020 helped the family pay $8 billion in inheritance taxes.
6. In Taiwan, chip designer MediaTek Inc. Kay Tsai Ming-kai and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. founder Morris Chang also joined this special list this year.
7. China’s efforts to become self-sufficient in terms of technology and its competition with the US for AI dominance have seen many new entrants join the list. Among them are Suzhou TFC Optical Communication Company Xue Xinong and his family and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Company Yuan Fuzhen.