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TOP 10 LIST
1. Bill Gates
Net Worth: $72 billionBill Gates remains atop The Forbes 400, a perch he's held since 1994, despite giving away $28 billion, most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He's also again the world's richest person, having reclaimed that title from Mexico's Carlos Slim earlier this year. Shares of Microsoft jumped in late August on news that Steve Ballmer will step down as CEO, but Gates will remain chairman of the software company he cofounded in 1975 with Paul Allen. His stake in Microsoft represents less than a fifth of his fortune.
2. Larry Ellison
Net Worth: $41 billionLittle gets in the way of Larry Ellison's ambition--or mouth. In an August TV interview, the Oracle founder said that Apple's best days are behind it after the passing of close friend Steve Jobs and that Google's alleged infringement on Oracle's patents in its Android software was "absolutely evil." Ellison collects houses on Malibu's Carbon Beach and also owns of 98% of Hawaii's Lanai island. In his quest for youth he has donated $445 million to his medical foundation to support research on aging and age-related diseases.
3. Jeff Bezos
Net Worth: $27.2 billionAmazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos shocked the world in August 2013 when he bought himself a new toy: the storied 136-year-old newspaper The Washington Post. The $250 million purchase launched fevered speculation about what insights an exemplary disrupter like Bezos might have about the troubled print media business. Meanwhile, despite operating at basically zero profit in recent quarters, Amazon stock peaked over $300 for the first time in July 2013, with investors increasingly bullish about the online behemoth's potential as the go-to site for online shopping. It reported 2013 second-quarter sales of $15.7, up 22% from the year prior.
4. Larry Page
Net Worth: $24.9 billionGoogle co-founder Larry Page added $4.6 billion to his fortune in the past year. Shares of the search juggernaut are up nearly 50% since he took over as CEO in April 2011. Lately he has been deflecting intense scrutiny on Google and other online services over accusations that they supplied the U.S. government with users' data through the previously secret PRISM program. Page wrote in his blog: "Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users' data are false, period."
5. Sergey Brin
Net Worth: $24.4 billionSergey Brin lets Larry Page run the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant while he oversees its secretive Google X division, dedicated to breakthrough ideas like driverless cars and Glass, the augmented-reality spectacles he wears everywhere. He had a cameo in Google-inspired Hollywood flick The Internship. The company's soaring stock price led to a $4.1 billion jump in Brin's net worth since last September. News broke in August that he and his wife of six years, Anne Wojcicki, are splitsville and that Brin is involved with a Google employee.
6. Mark Zuckerberg
Net Worth: $19 billionMark Zuckerberg foiled doubters with a strong return to the Top 20 of The Forbes 400. Thanks to strong mobile ad growth, shares of Facebook have more than doubled in the past year, helping to erase the sting of the company's botched IPO in May 2012. The hoodie-wearing CEO expanded his influence beyond Silicon Valley with lobbying group FWD.us, which advocates for immigration reform and technology education.
7. Steve Ballmer
Net Worth: $18 billionSteve Ballmer is throwing in the towel. Microsoft's CEO since 2000 has been pilloried in the press for years for a lack of strategic focus and letting Apple and Google run off with the mobile future. But Ballmer had just been doing what he's always done best: Sell wildly profitable software to businesses around the globe. Microsoft has generated more than $120 billion in profit and $80 billion in dividends since he took over, yet its long-suffering shareholders have been treated to a negative 17.6% return. The news was a surprise to many because in July, Ballmer issued with a 2,700-word memo outlining a big reorganization and focus on building "devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders."
8. Michael Dell
Net Worth: $15.9 billionAfter months locked in battle with activist investor Carl Icahn, PC entrepreneur Michael Dell won shareholder approval of his final $24.9 billion offer to take his eponymous company private in what will be the biggest leveraged buy-out in recent years. The Texan, who started the PC maker in his dorm room 29 years ago and remains Chairman and CEO, believes pulling out of the public markets will help Dell shift from a struggling personal computer business into a business software giant.
9. Paul G. Allen
Net Worth: $15.8 billionMicrosoft cofounder Paul Allen owns only an estimated $2 billion in the software outfit's stock but is still bullish on technology. His Vulcan group just opened a venture capital office in Silicon Valley, investing in online retailer Gilt Groupe and a cloud-software firm. In late 2012 he sold a 12-building campus in Seattle to Amazon, which was leasing the space, for $1.15 billion. He owns the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers. With his band, The Underthinkers, he just released country-rock album Everywhere At Once.
10 . Charles Ergen
Net Worth: $12.5 billionEntrepreneur Charles Ergen entered the satellite-TV business in the 1980s, just as the industry was set to explode. Although Dish Network and Echostar, the two companies he controls, are still profit machines, he foresees a day when consumers get all their video content over the Internet or through high-speed mobile. A $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel in April concluded with Ergen coming up empty-handed. His net worth is up $3.5 billion from a year ago due to a 40% climb in Dish Network stock.
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