While Microsoft founder Bill Gates may still be the richest person in America with $59 billion at his disposal he has one young tech star quickly grasping at his world’s richest American title thanks to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to recent Forbes numbers Zuckerberg has watched his personal wealth skyrocket to $17.1 billion placing him at #14 on the world’s richest people list.
By jumping up to #14 Zuckerberg now has more money than Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page who have personal wealth of $16.7 billion each. Zuckerberg is also only slightly behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who has brought in $19.1 billion.
While Mark is worth a lot of money on paper his company has not yet went public which means much of that cash is based off Facebook’s valuation and not cold hard cash.
Other members of the Forbes list who rank close to Zuckerberg are:
Michael Dell (#18, $15 billion), Steve Ballmer (#19, $13.9 billion), Paul Allen (#23, $13.2 billion) and Steve Jobs (#39, $7 billion).
Does it surprise you that Zuckerberg is worth so much cash? Given Facebook’s near dominance of the display advertising market and a user base of almost 800 million I can’t say his wealth surprises me, I actually think it will climb higher when Facebook’s IPO finally becomes a reality.
