Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the other richest tech billionaires lost a total of $44 billion this week

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Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the other richest tech billionaires lost a total of $44 billion this week
Susan Walsh/AP; Joshua Roberts/Reuters; Axel Schmidt/Getty Images
  • The 10 wealthiest tech billionaires lost a combined $44 billion in net worth amid a tech sell-off that ended an 11-day rally.
  • Jeff Bezos saw the biggest personal drop at $9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and the wealthiest woman, his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, is also on the list.
  • For the billionaires affected, including Bezos, Scott, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates, the drop in wealth represents only a fraction of their collective net worth.
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The collective wealth of the 10 wealthiest tech billionaires just dropped by $44 billion. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos saw the biggest drop in individual wealth, losing $9 billion.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg also saw drops of $8.5 billion and $4.2 billion, respectively. And Bill Gates' wealth is down $2.9 billion.

Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates are centibillionaires (meaning they have net worths of at least $100 billion each), and these losses are fractions of their overall net worths. For example, Bezos' net worth dropped 4.5%.

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Their drops in net worth come after a strong start to 2020 for tech companies, as customers around the world turned to online retailers and services during the coronavirus pandemic. The market continued to rally, but concerns that the companies have overextended valuations led to a large tech sell-off this week that saw the Dow plunged 740 points on Thursday, putting an end to an 11-day hot streak.

Even after these losses, the 10 richest billionaires still have a collective net worth of $830 billion.

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MacKenzie Scott also experienced a loss, seeing her net worth drop by $3.2 billion. She became the richest woman after her divorce from Bezos in 2019.

The drops in wealth come as the pandemic has shed light on wealth inequality in the US, with one in five Americans facing eviction in September and food banks seeing increasing demand.

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