Forbes released a new list of the richest billionaires worldwide, who – 2,640 of them – are reportedly collectively worth $12.2 trillion, a drop of $500 billion from $12.7 trillion in March 2022.

According to Forbes, nearly half of the world’s billionaires dropped value, “including Elon Musk, who falls from No. 1 to No. 2 after his pricey acquisition of Twitter helped sink Tesla shares.”

The chief at LVMH, Bernard Arnault, is the world’s richest person, but the US boasts the most billionaires with 735 list members worth a collective $4.5 trillion.

China (including Hong Kong and Macau) remains second, with 562 billionaires worth $2 trillion, followed by India, with 169 billionaires worth $675 billion.

In Africa, there are about 19 billionaires.

Meanwhile, 254 people have lost their billionaire status altogether, including crypto wunderkind-turned-fraud defendant Sam Bankman Fried, his cofounder and possible courtroom opponent Gary Wang, musician Kanye West, plus scores of tech tycoons and at least 19 founders of billion-dollar “unicorn” companies, including Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer of NFT marketplace OpenSea, and Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi of credit card fintech Brex.

For the criteria to calculate net worth, Forbes reported to have used stock prices and exchange rates from March 10, 2023.

To narrow the roll call, we listed the first 100 tech billionaires on the list.

Key findings:

• Only seven women are on the list of the first tech 100, and some of them are either spouses of a founder/CEO or inherited a fortune
• The first ten tech billionaires are collectively worth $813.4 billion
• Africa’s tech billionaires are collectively worth $11.3 billion
• The only Nigerian on the list is Mike Adenuga (telecom, oil) – $6.1 billion

Africa’s tech billionaires:

Mike Adenuga (Nigeria) – $6.1 billion – founder, Globacom

Naguib Sawiris (Egypt) – $3.3 billion – chairman, Weather Investments’s parent company, and the former chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom Holding and Orascom Investment Holding S.A.E.

Strive Masiyiwa (Zimbabwe) – $1.9 billion – founder and executive chairman of Econet Global and Cassava Technologies international technology groups.

From our archives: Africa Currently Has 18 Billionaires($), Tech Has Only 4

See the list of the first 100 tech billionaires below:

1. Jeff Bezos – $114 b — (founder, Amazon)
2. Larry Ellison – $107 b — (chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder, Oracle)
3. Bill Gates – $104 b — (founder, Microsoft)
4. Carlos Slim Helu & Family – $93 b — (controls América Móvil)
5. Steve Ballmer – $80.7 b — (former CEO, Microsoft)
6. Larry Page – $79.2 b — (board member and controlling shareholder, Alphabet)
7. Sergey Brin – $76 b — (board member and controlling shareholder, Alphabet)
8. Mark Zuckerberg – $64.4 b — (founder, Facebook)
9. Michael Dell – $50.1 b — (chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies)
10. Zhang Yiming – $45 b — (main founder, ByteDance)
11. Ma Huateng – $35.3 b — (chair, Tencent Holdings)
12. Colin Zheng Huang – $30.2 b — (founder, PDD Holdings)
13. William Lei Ding – $26.7 b — (CEO, NetEase)
14. Shiv Nadar – $25.6 b — (cofounder, HCL)
15. MacKenzie Scott – $24.4 b — (ex-wife of Jeff Bezos)
16. Jack Ma – $23.5 b — (cofounder, Alibaba Group)
17. Masayoshi Son – $22.4 b
18. Jensen Huang – $21.1 b — (cofounder, Nvidia)
19. Eric Schmidt – $16.2 b — (former board, Alphabet)
20. Robert Pera – $15.5 b — (founder and CEO, Ubiquiti)
21. Jan Koum – $13.7 b — (cofounder, WhatsApp)
22. Laurene Powell Jobs & Family – $12 b — (Walt Disney, Apple inheritance)
23. Pavel Durov – $11.5 b — (founder and owner, Telegram)
24. Zhang Zhidong – $11 b
25. Mike Cannon-Brookes – $10.2 b — (cofounder and co-CEO, Atlassian)
26. David Duffield – $10.2 b — (cofounder, PeopleSoft and Workday)
27. Eduardo Saverin – $10.2 b — (cofounder, Facebook)
28. Scott Farquhar – $10.1 b — (cofounder and co-CEO, Atlassian)
29. Lei Jun – $9.7 b — (cofounder and chairman, Xiaomi)
30. Rick Cohen & Family – $9.6 b — (owner and executive chairman, C&S Wholesale Grocers)
31. Wang Xing – $9.4 b — (founder and CEO, Meituan)
32. Brian Chesky – $9.3 b — (cofounded, Airbnb)
33. Azim Premji – $9.2 b — (Wipro)
34. David Cheriton – $9 b — (investment in Google)
35. John Doerr – $8.8 b — (chairman, Kleiner Perkins)
36. Richard Liu – $8.8 b — (founder and chairman, JD.com)
37. Dustin Moskovitz – $8.8 b — (Facebook)
38. Pierre Omidyar – $8.8 b — (founder, eBay)
39. Hasso Plattner & Family – $8.6 b — (SAP)
40. Andreas von Bechtolsheim – $8.6 b — (cofounder, chairman and chief development officer, Arista Networks)
41. Nathan Blecharczyk – $8 b — (cofounder, Airbnb)
42. Jay Y. Lee – $7.9 b (executive chairman, Samsung Electronics)
43. Rocco Commisso – $7.8 b — (founder and CEO, Mediacom)
44. Qi Shi & Family – $7.8 b — (chair, East Money Information)
45. Robin Li – $7.7 b — (CEO and cofounder, Baidu)
46. Henry Samueli – $7.7 b — (cofounder and chairman, Broadcom)
47. Joe Gebbia – $7.6 b — (cofounder, Airbnb)
48. Joseph Tsai – $7.6 b — (vice chairman and cofounder, Alibaba Group)
49. James Goodnight – $7.4 b — (cofounder, SAS)
50. Wang Laichun – $7.3 b — (chair, Luxshare Precision Industry)
51. Terry Gou – $7.2 b — (founder, Hon Hai Precision)
52. Judy Faulkner – $7.1 b — (founder, Epic Systems)
53. Marc Benioff – $7 b — (CEO, Salesforce)
54. Jack Dangermond – $7 b — (founder, Esri)
55. Liu Jincheng $6.9 b — (Chair, EVE Energy)
56. Gordon Moore -$6.8 b — (cofounder, Intel)
57. Wang Laisheng – $6.8 b — (vice chairman, Luxshare Precision Industry)
58. Xavier Neil $6.7 b — (Iliad)
59. David Sun – $6.7 b — (cofounder, Kingston Technology)
60. John Tu $6.7 b — (CEO, Kingston Technology)
61. Henry Nicholas III – $6.6 b — (cofounder, Broadcom)
62. Melinda French Gates – $6.5 b — (co-chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
63. Mike Adenuga – $6.1 b — (telecom, oil)
64. Sunil Mittal – $6.1 b — (Bharti Airtel)
65. Zhou Qunfei – $6.1 b — (chair, Lens Technology)
66. Jay Chaudhry – $6 b — (CEO, Zscaler)
67. David Steward – $6 b — (founder and chairman, World Wide Technology)
68. Chen – $5.5 b — (chair, Yageo)
69. John Collison – $5.5 b — (co-founder and president, Stripe)
70. Patrick Collison – $5.5 b — (co-founder and CEO, Stripe)
71. Richard White – $5.5 b — (founder, WiseTech Global)
72. Leo Koguan – $5.4 b — (founder and chairman, SHI International)
73. Ananda Krishnan $5.2 b (telecoms)
74. Barry Lam – $5.2 b — (chairman, Quanta Computer)
75. Charles Simonyi – $5.2 b — (Microsoft)
76. Romesh Wadhwani – $5.1 b — (chairman, Symphony AI)
77. Martin Haefner – $5 b — (former stake in CA Technologies)
78. Robert Hale – $5 b — (founder and CEO, Granite Telecommunications)
79. Kim Beom-su – $5 b — (founder, Kakao)
80. Dagmar Dolby – $4.9 b — (36% shares in Dolby Laboratories)
81. Marcos Galperin – $4.9 b — (founder and CEO, MercadoLibre)
82. Vinod Khosla – $4.8 b — (founder, Khosla Ventures)
83. Thai Lee – $4.8 b — (CEO, SHI International) f
84. Jason Chang – $4.7 b — (chair, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering)
85. Hong Ra-hee – $4.7 b — (widow of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee)
86. Jack Dorsey – $4.6 b — (CEO, Block (formerly called Square))
87. Dietmar Hopp – $4.5 b — (SAP)
88. Jiang Bin – $4.5 b — (chair, Goertek)
89. Joe Liemandt – $4.5 b — (founder, ESW Capital)
90. N.R. Narayana Murthy – $4.5 b — (cofounder and retired chairman, Infosys)
91. Margot Birmingham Perot – $4.5 b — (widow of the late tech entrepreneur and presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, Sr.)
92. Patrick Drahi – $4.3 b — (founder and owner, Altice NV)
93. Frank Wang – $4.3 b — (founder and CEO, DJI)
94. Wang Wenjing – $4.3 b — (chair, Yonyou Software, once known as UFIDA)
95. Min Kao & Family – $4.2 b — (cofounder, Garmin)
96. Eric Lefkofsky – $4.2 b — (founder, Groupon)
97. Lin Bin – $4.2 b — (vice chairman, Xiaomi)
98. Michael Moritz – $4.2 b — (venture capital)
99. Jeff Skoll – $4.2 b — (eBay’s first full-time hire and president in 1995)
100. Scott Cook – $4.1 b — (cofounder, Intuit)