Thanks to a particularly swell week on the market, six bros from Silicon Valley are an estimated $13.4 BILLION with a ‘b’ richer. Leading the financial windfall was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who made an estimated $5.6 billion last week, following him is Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer up $2.1 billion, Google’s Sergey and Larry each went up $1.8 billion, Bill Gates saw a spike of $1.5 billion, and last but not least, Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune went up a measly $400 million. I don’t even know if it’s fair to include Zuckerberg in conversation with these other elite tech bros, as he didn’t even make a billion last week. In hindsight I really should’ve gone with ‘5 tech bros made an estimated $13 billion last week, and Zuckerberg barely did jack squat’.
I cannot even begin to comprehend making that much money in a week, as I cannot even begin to comprehend what it’d be like to have that much money. As these six tech bros are in possession of what seems like all the world’s wealth I’m just over here looking up ways to make ramen noodles more delicious. But seriously, ALL THE POWER IN THE WORLD to these bros for making cash hand over fist. Just how did these guys make so much goddamn money last week? Let’s take a look:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made nearly $5 billion just on Friday of last week. The shares began to surge (up 15% on the day) after Amazon made announcements regarding the ‘Amazon Web Services’, and how Amazon’s cloud service offerings generated a ridiculous $1.57 BILLION in Q1 alone. As CEO of Amazon Bezos owns 83,933,463 shares at $445.10 each (after his five billion dollar day).
After Bezos comes Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer, and co-founder Bill Gates, who made $2 billion and $1.5 billion (respectively) after Microsoft’s stock went up 15% over the course of last week due to beating Q1 projections.
If you’re not keep tally, that’s $8.5 BILLION made by just three tech bros last week. To clarify, they didn’t actually pocket all that cash, but you already know that. Their stocks simply went up to reflect those earnings.
The two co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each made $1.9 BILLION after Google shares went up 8% last week.
And coming in at 6th on the list is lil ol’ Marky Zuckerberg who made $400,000,000. Which while it’s a respectable number, it’s still over ONE BILLION less than what Bill Gates made.
To put all of this in perspective, yesterday I sat with a friend looking at StubHub as we were buying tickets for tomorrow’s game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees. We were debating over whether or not we should spend the extra $20 on seats that’d be slightly closer, but ultimately decided it didn’t matter and by cutting the 20 bucks we could buy two more beers. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos made so much money on Friday he could buy TWO OF THE NEW YORK YANKEES. Not the players, the entire goddamn team (valued at $2.5 billion).
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These earnings reports are an amalgam from USA Today’s America’s Markets as well as CNBC.