World’s 8 Richest People Now Have a Combined Net Worth of $1 Trillion

The rally in tech shares has taken the number of people with fortunes of more than $100 billion (roughly Rs. 7,54,390 crores) to eight.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin joined the exclusive club last week, entering a group dominated by US tech entrepreneurs, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The world's eight richest people together hold fortunes of more than $1 trillion and have added $110 billion combined this year.
In 2017, Amazon's Jeff Bezos was the first to hit the $100 billion milestone since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates back in 1999. Gates's wealth then slumped with the dot-com bubble burst, and he regained the title of centibillionaire only in 2019. Tesla's Elon Musk and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg joined the club last year as the tech industry led a boost in wealth creation with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating a switch to online.

Billionaires with a wealth of at least $100 billion are mostly US-based. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressive lawmakers recently revived plans to introduce a wealth tax, though the proposal is unlikely to go anywhere in a narrowly divided Congress.

“The US economy is the world's most powerful engine of wealth creation and prosperity,” John Lettieri, president and chief executive officer of Washington DC-based think tank Economic Innovation Group, told US lawmakers March 17. “In spite of this, the lack of wealth at the bottom remains a troubling and persistent fact of life in this country.”

US shares climbed to a fresh record Friday on optimism over the economic recovery. The tech-focused Nasdaq 100 Index has risen more than 7 percent this year, with Google parent Alphabet rallying for the past two weeks as it won a copyright ruling. Page and Brin have added more than $20 billion each to their wealth this year, some of the biggest gains.