A familiar name returned to the ranks of the “Forbes 400,” this year, but the pinnacle of the list saw one long-running name take a dive.
The list was topped by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose estimated net worth of $251 billion made him not only the richest American, according to Forbes, but the top name on its list of global billionaires.
Former President Donald Trump was ranked as America’s 343rd richest person, according to Forbes.
Trump, who had fallen off the 2021 list, has an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, forbes reported to Forbes.
The catalyst for Trump’s return was his creation of the Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind the social media platform Truth Social.
Forbes estimated that Trump’s investment in that venture is worth $730 million.
The #Forbes400 members remain largely self-made, with 275, or 69%, having created their fortune rather than inheriting it. It also remains male dominated, with just 58 women, two more than a year ago. https://t.co/Pw6dEw8Xvb
— Forbes (@Forbes) September 27, 2022
But as the tech sector giveth, the tech sector taketh away.
Should Elon Musk to become the owner of Twitter?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of the list of America’s 10 richest people for the first time since 2015, according to Forbes.
“No one in America has lost as much money over the past year as Zuckerberg,” Forbes wrote.
Forbes estimated that the 57-percent drop in the value of Meta’s stock was a key factor in Zuckerberg losing $76.8 billion over the past year.
Zuckerberg is a long way from the poorhouse, with an estimated net worth of $57.7 billion, which placed him 11th on the list. He was third on the list last year.
A privacy policy update from Apple that limits tracking has caused ripples in the tech sector that led to Meta reporting its first-ever decline in advertising revenue this summer.
“Facebook makes most of its money from advertising, and now it just doesn’t have that data anymore,” Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at research and investment banking firm Benchmark, said. “All those data signals went away, which basically means that advertisers are having trouble telling whether a campaign was successful or not.”
The very top of the very top are $235 billion poorer than a year ago, but they’re still worth a combined $1.6 trillion.
Four of the top 20 are worth $100 billion or more, down from eight last year, but up from two in 2020 and none in 2017. #Forbes400 https://t.co/3BxGHAZ9wf
— Forbes (@Forbes) September 27, 2022
In assessing the group overall, Forbes noted that life at the top had been a rocky ride, with the 400 richest Americans worth about $500 billion less than a year ago. Making the list this year required a lower net worth than last year, at $2.7 billion, according to Forbes.
The top 10, in order, were: Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, investor Warren Buffet, Google founder Larry Page, Google founder Sergey Brin, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Walmart’s Jim Walton.
