20. Reed Hastings
Title: Cofounder and CEO, Netflix
Country: US
Age: 55
As the founder and CEO of Netflix — the streaming media service that’s made over 100 million hours of movies and TV available to users and has produced a slew of award-winning original television series — Hastings has redefined what it means to watch and create TV in 2015.
Although Netflix's stock has been a roller coaster since going public in 2002, its shares hit a record high of $126.45 in August — a more than eight-fold increase from its IPO — and the company today is worth more than $50 billion.
Hastings, who has a net worth of more than $1.25 billion, isn’t only changing the experience for viewers, he’s also enhancing the lives of his employees. This summer, the company, which already offers unlimited vacation, instituted up to a year of paid maternity and paternity leave for its employees, paving the way for other forward-thinking companies to follow suit.
19. Reid Hoffman
Title: Cofounder and chairman, LinkedIn
Country: US
Age: 48
Reid Hoffman has been involved with several of the world's most prominent tech firms. Hoffman started his career in 1994 as a product manager at Apple and later served on the board and as executive vice president for PayPal. In 2003 he cofounded LinkedIn, the professional networking service that has more than 400 million members in over 200 countries and is worth $32 billion.
Today, Hoffman's a partner at storied VC firm Greylock Partners, where he has advised and worked with tech stalwarts like Facebook and Airbnb. He's become one of the most well-connected and experienced investors in tech, and young entrepreneurs and executives hang on his every word, whether he's offering management advice or sharing lessons he's learned from early career failures.
Last year, the self-made billionaire — whose net worth is at least $5 billion, according to Wealth-X — coauthored the best-selling book “The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age,” and this fall, between his work at Greylock and LinkedIn, he’s teaching a class on startup success at Stanford with Silicon Valley fixtures John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh.
18. Peter Thiel
Title: Cofounder and chairman, Palantir
Country: US
Age: 48
PayPal cofounder, early Facebook investor, and bestselling author of “Zero to One” Peter Thiel has a fortune of over $2.3 billion and is one of the tech industry's most revered investors. Though he sold most of his Facebook stock following the social media company’s IPO in 2012, the billionaire still has his hand in several projects across Silicon Valley. Most notably, his secretive big-data company Palantir, which was valued at $20.2 billion after raising a $100 million round of funding in October.
Thanks to Thiel and investments from his venture capital firm Founders Fund, several other startups have come to fruition since 2005 as well, including home rental site Airbnb, ride hailing service Lyft, and music streaming app Spotify.
Thiel also runs the Thiel Foundation, which awards a annual crop of 20 young entrepreneurs $100,000 each to chase their business ideas. Ever unconventional — he notoriously hates suits and doesn’t hire MBAs — one of Thiel's requirements for his fellows is that they forego or drop out of college for two years to pursue the program.
17. Jack Dorsey
Title: Cofounder and CEO, Twitter and Square
Country: US
Age: 39
Jack Dorsey boasts an impressive résumé for someone under 40: He’s the cofounder and CEO of two multibillion-dollar companies — Twitter and Square — and is worth more than $1.5 billion himself.
Dorsey stepped in as the interim CEO of Twitter in July amid company turmoil and poor performance, earning the post permanently in October. He quickly moved to lay off staff, but he curried favor with those remaining by donating $200 million of his Twitter shares to employees. This is Dorsey's second crack at the job — he served as CEO until 2008, when he lost favor for becoming distracted with hobbies and side projects and was eventually asked to step down.
Dorsey also took his payment company, Square, public in November, with shares surging from an initial $9 up to as high as $14.78 — a positive sign following a turbulent week prior to the IPO. Dorsey himself walked away victorious as well, earning nearly $300 million over the course of the day.
16. Marc Andreessen
Title: Cofounder, Andreessen Horowitz
Country: US
Age: 44
Everyone in Silicon Valley wants an investment from Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Now almost synonymous with Silicon Valley itself, the six-year-old firm backs some of the biggest names in tech, including BuzzFeed, Facebook, Pinterest, Skype, Slack, and Twitter.
One of the most respected names in the industry, Andreessen's ability to ensure or destroy the future of a budding startup with a single investment decision makes him one of Silicon Valley's most powerful. He’s both respected and feared, with big ideas and little patience for error.
Andreessen has been at the forefront of tech since 1994, when he cofounded Netscape Communications, an early web browser. He successfully took the company public in 1995, arguably launching the tech boom of the '90s and ushering in the age of the internet.
15. Travis Kalanick
Title: Founder and CEO, Uber
Country: US
Age: 39
Worth a whopping $51 billion, ride-hailing service Uber is currently the most valuable private company in tech. And at its helm sits CEO Travis Kalanick, the often embattled billionaire who is worth more than $5 billion himself.
Though pocked with controversy and still working to overcome regulatory hurdles, Uber continues to grow, rolling out new features such as UberEATS and UberRush, which add food delivery and courier services to the company’s repertoire in addition to its signature on-demand chauffeurs. The company operates in 311 cities and 58 countries worldwide, and remains dominant over rival ride-hailing companies like Lyft. There’s been speculation over when Kalanick will take Uber public, but he swears an IPO isn’t on the horizon yet.
Uber isn’t Kalanick’s first Silicon Valley endeavor. He dropped out of Stanford to work on peer-to-peer search engine Scour, which went bankrupt in 2000. But Kalanick returned to the tech scene almost immediately with networking software company Red Swoosh, which he sold to Akamai in 2007 for $23 million, a comparatively paltry amount compared to the fortune he's since built with Uber.
14. Meg Whitman
Title: CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, chair of HP Inc.
Country: US
Age: 59
After taking the helm of IT company Hewlett Packard in 2011 amid internal corporate scandals, Meg Whitman set out to overhaul the company and revive its declining profits and revenues. She wrote off fruitless acquisitions, implemented thousands of layoffs, and ultimately split HP into two separate Fortune 500 companies, a change that took effect November 1. Whitman now serves as CEO of new brand Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which will focus on software and tech services, and is the chairman of HP Inc., which will center on personal computers and printers.
Previously the longtime CEO of e-commerce site eBay, Whitman’s personal net worth sits at a sizable $2.1 billion. When she took the position at eBay, the company only had 30 employees and $4 million in revenue, but by the time she left 10 years later, eBay was generating $8 billion in annual revenue and employed more than 15,000 people.
Whitman’s no stranger to politics either. Back in 2010, she unsuccessfully ran for governor of California, famously spending more of her own money on the campaign — at least $119 million — than any other self-funded politician in history.
13. Ma Huateng
Title: Founder and CEO, Tencent
Country: China
Age: 44
Ma Huateng, commonly known by his English nickname "Pony," is the founder and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd., one of the biggest technology companies in China. He’s also one of the richest people in the country with a net worth topping $18 billion. Yet despite his prestige and influence, little is known about the secretive billionaire’s personal life.
His company, on the other hand, is one of the most ubiquitous in China. The tech behemoth functions as an all-in-one social network, performing similar functions to Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, and Uber combined. It boasts more than 860 million monthly users on its QQ messaging service and is expanding internationally into Southeast Asia and India.
Tencent was early to embrace mobile, a decision that put it a step ahead of competitors. It launched mobile messaging app Weixin in 2011 and has been regularly adding new, innovative features, such as a locator that alerts users to who is nearby.
12. Ginni Rometty
Title: Chairman and CEO, IBM
Country: US
Age: 58
Last year, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty had to break some tough news: The tech company would be abandoning its years-long promise to hit $20 earnings per share by 2015. But the company's top leader has hatched a new plan: IBM will invest $4 billion to grow $40 billion in revenue in areas such as cloud computing, mobile, and big data by 2018. The plan would nearly double what IBM is making in these markets now, though it also means straying from the hardware focus that's defined IBM for decades.
Rometty's mandate is to keep one of tech's most iconic companies — which employs 380,000 people, on par in size with the population of New Orleans — relevant and profitable for the long haul, even if it means changing some of the most fundamental things about the company. The IBM lifer isn't apologizing for adapting. "Reinvention is not about protecting your past," she said at the Fortune Global Forum earlier this year.
11. Robin Li
Title: CEO, Baidu
Country: China
Age: 46
There's a trio of internet kings in China, collectively known as "BAT" — Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent. For his part, Robin Li commands the market in internet search as the chairman and CEO of Baidu, China's Google equivalent.
As with Google, Li's Baidu is constantly investing in the future. In May, Baidu announced a partnership with Daimler, the maker of Chinese Mercedes-Benz, to provide software for their cars that allows drivers to access content from their smartphones. And in conjunction with BMW, Baidu is building a self-driving car prototype that it hopes to reveal by year-end.
Li, whose net worth is upwards of $11 billion, also said this year that his company would invest $3.2 billion in "online to offline" services, which allow mobile users to perform traditionally non-digital tasks such as buying movie tickets, hailing cabs, and finding deals at restaurants.
10. Satya Nadella
Title: CEO, Microsoft
Country: US
Age: 48
Since becoming Microsoft's third CEO last year, Satya Nadella has been busy helping the technology company become relevant again. While Microsoft is still a software giant — it pulls in $95 billion in sales — it's far from its former glory as tech's innovative, undisputed leader.
But Nadella, a Microsoft veteran of 23 years, has made significant progress in rejuvenating the company: He successfully released Windows 10, a huge hit that attracted over 110 million users in three months; he converted Microsoft rivals like Salesforce and Oracle into partners; he launched Microsoft into the growing Internet of Things market with a new database, cloud service, and big-data analysis service; and he oversaw Microsoft's biggest layoff round ever while still maintaining his likability among employees.
9. Elon Musk
Title: CEO, Tesla and SpaceX
Country: US
Age: 44
The man who believes there's "no such thing as business, only the pursuit of a goal" has invested in, founded, or run 18 companies to date, including two of the most innovative technology firms in America: Tesla Motors and SpaceX. It was a big year for both companies, with retail deliveries of the Tesla Model X crossover vehicle starting in September and the launch (and failure) of a SpaceX rocket bound for the International Space Station in June. Anticipation is already high for the mass-market Model 3 sedan, which Tesla plans to unveil next March, and another SpaceX supply launch set for December.
Musk, who first hit it big cofounding PayPal in the late 1990s, has a growing fortune of more than $11 billion that enables him to experiment with technology of the future. In January, he announced via Twitter that he would build a five-mile Hyperloop test track to invite students and companies to test out their ideas for the high-speed transportation system. He also donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institution this year to keep artificial intelligence safe and beneficial to humans.
8. Larry Ellison
Title: Founder and executive chairman, Oracle
Country: US
Age: 71
Oracle's billionaire cofounder Larry Ellison stepped down as the company's CEO last year but hasn't pumped the brakes: He still serves as chairman and CTO of the $38 billion (sales) database and software titan. Ellison announced plans this year for Oracle to take over as the primary provider of cloud-computing products and services, revealing at the company's tech conference in October that 20% of its customers — and counting — bought tech via the cloud rather than traditionally.
Ellison, who routinely ranks as one of the 10 richest people in the world, holds a fortune of nearly $50 billion and a growing real-estate portfolio that spans the globe. His latest side project? Reviving the sport of tennis through investments at the "fifth grand slam" site in Indian Wells, California, and as lead sponsor for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Ellison is determined to "restore tennis to prominence in the US and make the game more profitable globally" — something he also recently accomplished with sailing.
7. Tim Cook
Title: CEO, Apple
Country: US
Age: 54
Tim Cook runs the most valuable company on the planet in Apple, which is worth $645 billion. Under Cook's continued direction as CEO, 2015 has been one of the company's best years yet.
Chief among Cook's 2015 successes has been the launch of Apple Music, the company's music-streaming service. The service went live in June and as of October counted 6.5 million paid subscribers and another 8.5 million people using the free trial service. And the iPhone is more popular than ever. At the company's annual fall event, Cook unveiled the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6S Plus, which sold 13 million in the first weekend, shattering previous records. Lately, Cook has been alluding to a forthcoming "massive change in the auto industry," sparking rumors that an Apple Car is on the horizon.
Cook was presented with the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award this year where he spoke about his deeply personal decision to come out as gay: "I wanted to lend my voice to people who might not be ready to exercise theirs," he said.
6. Jack Ma
Title: Founder and CEO, Alibaba
Country: China
Age: 51
The second-richest person in China, Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma broke records with the e-commerce company's $25 billion initial public offering in 2014 — the world’s largest ever. Post-IPO, however, Alibaba's good fortune began to slip. The company's shares dropped throughout 2015 and were down 25% through November, most likely in part because of China's slowing economy and concerns over counterfeiters using the company's platform.
Ma, who has a net worth of more than $25.6 billion, isn't worried, though. Alibaba remains dominant in one of the world's biggest markets, and he says the West's concern over China's economic slowdown is an "overreaction." In fact, Ma believes China is in the midst of an economic transition — one Alibaba will no doubt help facilitate — and will come out stronger.
5. Sergey Brin
Title: Cofounder and president, Alphabet
Country: US
Age: 42
Along with fellow cofounder Larry Page, Sergey Brin helped orchestrate Google’s massive restructuring, announced in August. The move made Google a subsidiary of a new holding company called Alphabet, run by Brin as president and Page as CEO. All of Google’s other ventures, such as Nest and Google X, are now separate companies under the Alphabet umbrella as well. The tech conglomerate generated $66 billion in sales in 2014.
The restructuring frees the founding duo from the nitty-gritty details of running the massive company, instead allowing them to focus on exploring inventive new "moon shot" projects and ideas. With top talent and an abundance of resources at their disposal, the company has already made automated homes and self-driving cars a reality.
Brin, who emigrated from Moscow to the US as a child, connected with Page in 1995 at Stanford, where they were each pursuing a Ph.D. They founded Google three years later, and today Brin and Page have personal fortunes of $38 billion and $42 billion today, respectively.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
Title: Founder and CEO, Facebook
Country: US
Age: 31
The leader of the world’s largest social network had a prosperous year. In May, Facebook-owned virtual-reality company Oculus VR made a buzzworthy announcement: It will finally sell its first consumer headset, Oculus Rift, starting early next year. A few months later, Facebook announced for the first time that its site had a billion users in a single day and 8 billion daily video views, double the number it reported in April. The company's stock is up about 40% through November 2015, and as a result Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has soared to $47.6 billion.
The Facebook founder also continues to invest hundreds of millions of his personal wealth in education, mainly through Startup:Education, a nonprofit he and his wife, Priscilla, founded in 2010 to improve schools in the Bay Area, and AltSchool, a company that promotes personalized education. He also gave $100 million to Newark, New Jersey's public schools, with disappointing results. After revealing in a July Facebook post that the couple is expecting their first child, they’ve announced plans to open a K-12 school in Palo Alto by next year that provides both education and health care to low-income families.
3. Larry Page
Title: Cofounder and CEO, Alphabet
Country: US
Age: 42
Larry Page made some major moves this year, starting with a massive overhaul of Google’s business structure in August. He announced via press release that Google would become a subsidiary of new holding company Alphabet, which would oversee all of Google’s ventures, such as Nest, Calico, and Google X, as standalone entities.
Previously the chief executive of Google, Page moved up to helm Alphabet as CEO, leaving company veteran Sundar Pichai in his spot. The change became official in October, and Page even dropped Google’s famous “don’t be evil” slogan from the new company.
Page cofounded Google with Sergey Brin, who will help run Alphabet as president, in 1998, and they've earned fortunes of $42 billion and $38 billion today, respectively. The pair grew the company from a Ph.D project at Stanford into one of the biggest and farthest-reaching tech companies in the world. In addition to its ubiquitous search engine, the company has its hands in everything from home automation and self-driving cars to prolonging human life.
2. Jeff Bezos
Title: CEO, Amazon.com
Country: US
Age: 51
Amazon.com is an undeniable superpower in e-commerce. The company, which generates $89 billion in sales but has often failed to turn a net profit, surprised investors in July by reporting quarterly earnings of $92 million, handily beating analyst expectations. Amazon stock shot up, making founder and CEO Jeff Bezos worth an estimated $55 billion. Despite negative media reports in August claiming Amazon’s warehouses are high-pressure, toxic work environments — claims Bezos disputed — the company has continued to thrive.
This year, Bezos led the growth of Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing branch, announced a plan for high-speed package delivery via drones, and opened Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle.
Bezos' privately owned space company Blue Origin successfully launched its first spacecraft this year and has plans to test rocket engines and launch manned rockets within the next decade.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
1. Bill Gates
Title: Cochair and trustee, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Country: US
Age: 60
Gates cofounded Microsoft in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen, building an iconic software company and becoming the richest man on earth in the process, with a net worth of $87.3 billion. Though he still sits on the company’s board, he’s no longer actively involved in Microsoft.
Instead, Gates is fixated on giving away his wealth and running one of the most powerful charities in the world with his wife, Melinda. They founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 after reading an article about curable diseases causing millions of child deaths in developing countries.
Since then, the organization has given away $34.5 billion to an array of causes, including efforts to eliminate HIV, malaria and many other infectious diseases. They also support agricultural development, emergency relief, global libraries, urban poverty, and education.
Gates and good friend Warren Buffett started the Giving Pledge to encourage billionaires to follow their lead and give away half or more of their wealth — 135 have signed up.
