Forbes magazine published its 29th annual Billionaires List. The most dynamic and thrilling part of it includes representatives of the IT field. Actually, the whole list begins with IT: business magnate and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is a headliner with $79.2 billion and he has held this title for 16 of the past 21 years.
Why should we look closer at representatives of the IT-industry on this list? The reason is that the industry itself is full of ups and downs, unexpected inventions and rapid changes. The craziest stories and the most interesting personalities usually come from IT.
Here you can find students creating corporations from their campus bedrooms, like Mark Zuckerberg ($33.4 billion) and Evan Spiegel ($1.5 billion). Co-founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel is also the youngest billionaire on the planet - he is just 24.
There is also an English language teacher, who became the richest man in China - founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma ($22.7 billion). Ma and three other Chinese are among the biggest gainers and appear among the 50 richest on the list, Forbes reports.
There are also emigrants who managed to change the whole industry - Google co-founder Sergey Brin ($29.2 billion) and CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp Jan Koum ($6.6 billion).
23 new billionaires come from California's Silicon Valley, including co-founders of car-hailing service Uber Travis Kalanick ($5.3 billion) and Garrett Camp ($5.3 billion), and their first employee Ryan Graves ($1.4 billion).
Foundation of a large IT-corporation is still one of the best ways to get rich. 7 out of 15 of the richest billionaires whose fortune comes from their hard Work represent the high-tech sector.
These are the 10 richest representatives of the IT field:
Bill Gates (Microsoft) - $79.2 billion
Larry Ellison (Oracle) - $54.3 billion
Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) - $34.8 billion
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) - $33.4 billion
Larry Page (Google Inc.) - $29.7 billion
Sergey Brin (Google Inc.) - $29.2 billion
Jack Ma (Alibaba Group) - $22.7 billion
Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) - $21.5 billion
Laurene Powell Jobs (Apple, Disney) - $19.5 billion
Michael Dell (Dell) - $19.2 billion
