Asian Tech Press (Jan 16) -- The wealth of the world's tech billionaires has shrunk dramatically over the past year as tech stocks have plummeted, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who lost more than $115 billion, considered the biggest loser from the stock market turmoil in 2022.
Forbes estimated that the planet's billionaires lost $1.9 trillion in 2022, with the total value of their wealth dropping from $13.8 trillion on Jan. 1, 2022, to $11.9 trillion on Dec. 9.
After some turbulence in the stock market, how much wealth will the Asian tech billionaires have left by the end of 2022? The following chart shows the top 100 Asian tech billionaires based on their wealth at the end of 2022.
As you can see, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., a large Indian conglomerate, is the richest technology tycoon in Asia in 2022 with a wealth of $87.1 billion.
Ambani's big fortune came from not only Reliance's well-established energy business, but also its fast-growing digital business. In October 2019, Reliance consolidated all its digital and telecom projects, including Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., India's largest and the world's third largest mobile network operator, to form a wholly owned subsidiary, Jio Platforms Ltd.
Jio Platforms, which bears Ambani's technology dream, has attracted a lot of capital attention in 2020, with Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Intel, Qualcomm and Google, the major U.S. technology giants, injecting capital into it. Facebook bought 9.9% of Jio Platforms for $5.7 billion, and Google bought a 7.7% stake for $4.5 billion.
Close behind Ambani is 40-year-old Zhang Yiming, founder of popular short-video app TikTok's parent company ByteDance. The Chinese entrepreneur came in second with a wealth of $54.9 billion.
Although Zhang has stepped down as CEO of ByteDance in May 2021, he is still the majority shareholder and the beneficial owner of ByteDance. Sources said in October last year that ByteDance reported revenues of nearly $18.3 billion in the first quarter of 2022, up nearly 54% year-over-year. As of December 2022, the Chinese tech company, one of the world's largest unicorns, had a valuation of $200 billion.
Tencent CEO Pony Ma Huateng, the 51-year-old Chinese entrepreneur who heads Asia's most valuable technology company by market value in 2022, came in third place with a wealth of $36.6 billion.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma ranked fifth with a wealth of $32.2 billion, following Robin Zeng, founder and chairman of Chinese battery giant CATL, who had a total wealth of $32.8 billion in 2022.
Two major Asian e-commerce companies, Pinduoduo and Shein, whose founders Colin Huang and Chris Xu ranked sixth and tenth with wealth of $28.7 billion and $23.5 billion, respectively.
It is worth noting that most of these 100 Asian tech billionaires are from China, and they have accumulated considerable wealth by working hard mainly in the Internet, pharmaceutical, automotive, electronics and new energy industries.
For example, Wang Chuanfu, the founder of Tesla's Chinese powerful rival BYD Co Ltd, Jiang Rensheng, founder of vaccine firm Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products Co., and Jin Baofang, chairman of JA Solar Holdings, were all worth around $10 billion by the end of 2022.
In addition, it can be seen that of these 100 Asian tech billionaires, only 14 have a wealth of $20 billion and above, while 66 have a wealth value of less than $10 billion.
Among these 100 entrepreneurs, the Asian tech billionaire with the least wealth is Zhu Baoguo, chairman of the Chinese firm Joincare Pharmaceutical Group Industry Co., who has a wealth of only $3.8 billion at the end of 2022, a considerable difference of $83.3 billion from the first-ranked Indian tycoon Ambani and $51.1 billion from the second-ranked Zhang Yiming.
It can be said that most of the top 100 Asian tech billionaires in 2022 were worth less than $10 billion, apart from a few with wealth of over $20 billion and above. This also means that most of the wealth in the technology sector is in the hands of a small group of individuals with a relatively high concentration.
Looking at the companies run by these 100 Asian tech billionaires, Internet firms with large user bases continue to generate more wealth for their owners, and more billionaires have been emerging in popular technology domains such as electric cars, consumer electronics and new energy.
