Bill Gates reigns supreme on World's Richest in Tech list

YEREVAN, AUGUST 6, ARMENPRESS. Forbes has released its World's Richest in Tech, a list of the top 100 wealthiest individuals in the industry. Armenpress informs that the list was released on August 5.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, was No. 1 with a US$79.6 billion (NZ$ 122 billion) net worth. He was followed by Oracle founder Larry Ellison with US$50 billion (NZ$76 billion) and Amazon's Jeff Bezos with US$47.8 billion (NZ$73.2 billion).

Rounding out the top 10: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jack Ma, Steve Ballmer, Laurene Powell Jobs and family, and Michael Dell.

Forbes noted that the top 100 are younger than the average billionaire and most likely to be American and living in California. Fifty-one of the people on the list are Americans and 33 are Asian. Just eight are Europeans and only seven are women.

TASS news agency informs that altogether, the world's 100 richest tech billionaires are worth US$842.9 billion. The average age is 53 - which Forbes said is a decade younger than the average age of all billionaires - and 15 of the top 100 are under 40.

The youngest member of the list is Snapchat co-founder and Chief Executive Evan Spiegel, who is 25 and worth an estimated US$2.1 billion.

The oldest is Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who is 86 and worth an estimated US$6 billion.

"Nearly all of the 100 are self-made billionaires: 94 made their own luck, three inherited their fortunes and three have inherited fortunes but have been actively expanding them," Forbes said.

The business magazine also broke down its list into categories, such as Richest Californians in Tech 2015 (led by Ellison), Wealthiest Women in Tech (Powell Jobs) and Europe's Richest Tech Tycoons 2015 (SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner).

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