Musk, Zuckerberg and Bill Gates: Why Tech Billionaires Are Losing Money in 2023

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Pandemic, war in Ukraine and high global interest rates affected the profits of technology companies and, consequently, the fortunes of executives in the sector. Musk, Zuckerberg and Bill Gates: why technology billionaires are ‘poorer’ in 2023 Reproduction A Forbes list released in early April shows who are the richest people in the world in 2023. It also reveals that almost half of billionaires is losing more money, including those in the technology sector. This is the case of Elon Musk (Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Larry Page (Google), Sergey Brin (Google) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) ( see more in the graphic below). Among these powerful, only Larry Ellison made more money between 2022 and 2023. Ellison is co-founder of the software company Oracle and has a fortune of US$ 107 billion today, against US$ 106 billion in 2022. billionaires What happened? The technology sector has the greatest capacity to generate billionaires, but it is not immune to economic uncertainties. “Companies’ coffers are affected when the economy is bad and this also impacts the fortunes of their executives. It generates a ripple effect”, explains Joelson Sampaio, economics professor at FGV EESP. For experts consulted by the g1, three factors promoted the fall in the fortune of technology billionaires: 🦠 Covid-19 pandemic: at the beginning of the health crisis, digitization increased. With everyone at home, governments gave financial aid to people, who spent more online. As a result, technology companies grew and needed to hire more people to meet the high demand. But this growth was not maintained after the easing; 🌍 War in Ukraine: Russia is one of the largest energy suppliers in the world and, with the start of the war, the West stopped buying gas and oil from Vladmir Putin’s country. But that embargo helped to raise inflation around the world. “Energy rose and pushed inflation upwards, which ended up raising the cost of companies”, explains professor of economics and international relations at ESPM Leonardo Trevisan. The economy, already affected by the pandemic, has deteriorated; 💸 High interest rate: Central banks in several countries raised the basic interest rate to contain this rampant inflation. The move impacted sales, and companies cut back on online ad spend to cut costs. “But digital advertising is the main source of revenue for ‘big techs'”, says Trevisan. Mark Zuckerberg has been losing more money Comparing to Forbes’ 2021 numbers, it is possible to identify that most billionaires made more money in 2022. But an expressive drop catches attention: Mark Zuckerberg. He saw his equity plummet from US$ 97 billion in 2021 to US$ 67.3 billion in 2022. Trevisan recalls that, in market value, Meta dropped more than the other companies. In addition to the factors mentioned above, TikTok’s influence contributed to the loss of Facebook’s owner – Zuckerberg himself recognizes that competition interfered with the growth of his company. Still according to the expert, most billionaires made more money in 2022 because investors predicted a beneficial scenario, which did not happen. Mass layoffs in “big techs” are an example of this bad moment. “Everyone made heavy investment during the hard phase of the pandemic, but the economy retracted”, says Leonardo Trevisan, from ESPM. “Despite the power they have, they are all companies like any other and they also face difficulties”, he concludes. READ ALSO: TWITTER: network keeps active at least 61 accounts with content from attacks on schools DEEPFAKE LIVE: technology, which changes face and voice in video call, already exists MUSK AND MORE: who supports pause in advances in artificial intelligence

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