Bill Gates back on top in Forbes rich list, Zuckerberg biggest gainer

By Trevor Mogg Published March 4, 2014

Take a quick look through the top 100 names in Forbes’ latest rich list, which was published this week, and as usual it’s populated by plenty of people from the world of tech. Despite seemingly doing his best to drop down the list by giving away lots of his lucre via his charitable foundation, Bill Gates is back in top spot after a four-year hiatus, with Forbes estimating the Microsoft co-founder to be worth a colossal $76 billion.

Mexican Carlos Slim Helu, who made his fortune through investments in the telecom industry, sits just behind Gates with a $72 billion fortune.

bill gates — Bill Gates: The more he gives away, the more he seems to get. Image used with permission by copyright holder

The next big tech name comes in at number 5, with Larry Ellison – co-founder and CEO of Oracle, the business hardware and software system provider – moving up one place from last year. He’s said to be worth $48 billion.

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Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin take the number 17 and 19 spots respectively ($32.3bn/$31.8bn), while sandwiched in between at 18 is Amazon founder and boss Jeff Bezos with $32 billion.

Among all those in the list, it was Mark Zuckerberg (21st) who saw his wealth increase the most in the past 12 months. The Facebook founder’s fortune leaped $15.2 billion to $28.5 billion, a rise attributable to the soaring value of the social networking giant’s stock. This also helped Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg into the list for the first time, with Forbes putting her wealth at just over a billion bucks.

Recently retired Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer placed 36th with $19.3 billion, while Masayoshi Son, founder of Japanese telecom giant Softbank, sits just a few places behind in 42nd spot with a fortune estimated to be worth $18.4 billion.

Others from the tech industry who’re positively rolling in it include Michael Dell (48th/$17.5bn), Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (56th/$15.9bn), Azim Premji of Indian software firm Wipro (61st/$51.3bn), and Chinese Internet entrepreneur Robin Li (91st/$12.1bn).

Forbes has been compiling a list of the world’s billionaires since 1987, when it contained just 140 names (it now runs at over 1500). Information on how the publication comes up with its valuations can be found here.

[Image: Vasiliy Koval / Shutterstock]

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Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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The company has created a lightweight version of Deep Research that is powered by its new o4-mini language model. OpenAI says this variant is “more cost-efficient while preserving high quality.” More importantly, it is available to use for free without any subscription caveat.

Entertainment

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Waymo and Toyota explore personally owned self-driving cars

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Waymo and Toyota have announced they’re exploring a strategic collaboration—and one of the most exciting possibilities on the table is bringing fully-automated driving technology to personally owned vehicles.
Alphabet-owned Waymo has made its name with its robotaxi service, the only one currently operating in the U.S. Its vehicles, including Jaguars and Hyundai Ioniq 5s, have logged tens of millions of autonomous miles on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.
But shifting to personally owned self-driving cars is a much more complex challenge.
While safety regulations are expected to loosen under the Trump administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has so far taken a cautious approach to the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles. General Motors-backed Cruise robotaxi was forced to suspend operations in 2023 following a fatal collision.
While the partnership with Toyota is still in the early stages, Waymo says it will initially study how to merge its autonomous systems with the Japanese automaker’s consumer vehicle platforms.
In a recent call with analysts, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai signaled that Waymo is seriously considering expanding beyond ride-hailing fleets and into personal ownership. While nothing is confirmed, the partnership with Toyota adds credibility—and manufacturing muscle—to that vision.
Toyota brings decades of safety innovation to the table, including its widely adopted Toyota Safety Sense technology. Through its software division, Woven by Toyota, the company is also pushing into next-generation vehicle platforms. With Waymo, Toyota is now also looking at how automation can evolve beyond assisted driving and into full autonomy for individual drivers.
This move also turns up the heat on Tesla, which has long promised fully self-driving vehicles for consumers. While Tesla continues to refine its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, it remains supervised and hasn’t yet delivered on full autonomy. CEO Elon Musk is promising to launch some of its first robotaxis in Austin in June.
When it comes to self-driving cars, Waymo and Tesla are taking very different roads. Tesla aims to deliver affordability and scale with its camera, AI-based software. Waymo, by contrast, uses a more expensive technology relying on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar and lidar (a laser-light radar), that regulators have been quicker to trust.