US Stock Market Boom Brings Smiles to Top 10 Billionaires... Musk's Wealth Up by 134 Trillion Won

The world's richest person, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has seen his wealth increase by more than 134 trillion won since the beginning of this year. Thanks to the booming U.S. stock market this year, the assets of billionaires ranked within the top 10 have all significantly increased.

According to Bloomberg on the 30th (local time), Musk's net worth increased by $105 billion (approximately 134 trillion won) as of the closing price on the 28th, marking the largest asset value increase among the billionaires tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This means his assets grew by more than $500 million (about 640 billion won) per day on average. His net worth stands at $242 billion (approximately 308.7 trillion won), solidifying his position at the top, close to the peak of $268 billion reached in September last year.

Tesla's stock price has surged more than 116% this year alone (as of the closing price on the 28th), approaching the all-time high recorded in September last year. Tesla's stock also experienced its longest rally ever, lasting 13 consecutive trading days in June.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. [Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Following Musk, the billionaire whose wealth increased the most was Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. Zuckerberg's net worth rose by $72.5 billion (approximately 92.5 trillion won) this year. Meta's stock price has climbed over 170% this year, boosting Zuckerberg's wealth concentrated in Meta shares. On the 26th, immediately after Meta's Q2 earnings announcement, Zuckerberg's net worth increased by $4.6 billion in after-hours trading in a single day.

Meta posted its largest quarterly earnings since the COVID-19 pandemic boom in Q2 this year. Meta's Q2 revenue rose 11% year-over-year to $32 billion (approximately 40.7 trillion won). This was the first time since Q4 2021 (20%) that Meta's quarterly revenue recorded double-digit growth. Earnings per share ($2.98) also exceeded market expectations ($2.92).

In third place was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, with $49.9 billion (63.66 trillion won). Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury empire Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), also saw their assets surge to $36.1 billion (approximately 46 trillion won) and $39.5 billion (approximately 50.4 trillion won), respectively. Riding the wave of generative artificial intelligence (AI) trends represented by ChatGPT, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saw their wealth increase by $34.4 billion to $36.9 billion (approximately 43.9 trillion to 47 trillion won).

Despite expectations that Google's core digital advertising business would shrink due to the ChatGPT craze and economic recession, Google posted surprising Q2 earnings. Particularly, advertising revenue grew by over 3% year-over-year, defending its search dominance. This news was welcomed by the market, and Google's stock surged more than 7% in after-hours trading. Following the Q2 earnings announcement, Larry Page and Sergey Brin's net worth each jumped by $5 billion.

Alongside Google, Microsoft (MS) founders Bill Gates and former MS CEO Steve Ballmer, leaders in the AI boom, saw their net worth increase by $26.9 billion to $31.7 billion (approximately 34.3 trillion to 40.43 trillion won) this year. However, MS's stock price fell by over 3% compared to before the earnings announcement (on the 25th) due to a slowdown in its cloud business growth, partially offsetting the increase in asset value. Besides tech billionaires, Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, also joined the top 10 billionaires by increasing his net worth by $10.3 billion (approximately 13.14 trillion won) this year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.