• The world's 10 richest people had a combined $172 billion wiped off their fortunes in three days.
• Stocks plunged after Trump's tariff plans sparked fears of retaliation and recession.
• Elon Musk is down $35 billion since Wednesday, while Mark Zuckerberg is down about $24 billion.

The world's 10 richest people had a combined $172 billion wiped off their fortunes during the stock market's three-day rout, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows.

President Donald Trump's unveiling of sweeping tariffs last Wednesday triggered a frantic sell-off that sent the S&P 500 down 11% over the course of Thursday, Friday, and Monday.

The world's 10 wealthiest people, collectively worth just over $2 trillion at the start of this year, have had more than $350 billion vaporized in 2025 due to the slide in the value of their equity stakes.

Elon Musk alone has shed $135 billion, bringing the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's net worth below $300 billion for the first time in five months. The only top 10 member in the green this year is Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who leads Berkshire Hathaway.

Here's where their fortunes stood at Monday's market close:

1. Elon Musk

Net worth: $298 billion

3-day change: down $35 billion

Year-to-date change: down $135 billion

Elon Musk's net worth has fluctuated wildly in recent months. Excitement about his proximity to the president has been replaced by concern, as anger has grown toward the White House's DOGE agency, and public backlash against Tesla has hammered the automaker's stock.

The world's richest person derives his wealth primarily from his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. His other businesses include SpaceX, Neuralink, X, The Boring Company, and xAI.

2. Jeff Bezos

Net worth: $196 billion

3-day change: down $21 billion

Year-to-date change: down $43 billion

Jeff Bezos is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon. He also owns The Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013. Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO in 2021.

3. Mark Zuckerberg

Net worth: $183 billion

3-day change: down $24 billion

Year-to-date change: down $25 billion

Mark Zuckerberg is the cofounder and CEO of Meta Platforms, the social media behemoth that owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads.

4. Warren Buffett

Net worth: $154 billion

3-day change: down $14 billion

Year-to-date change: up $12 billion

Warren Buffett, 94, is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. His conglomerate owns scores of businesses including Geico and See's Candies, and holds multibillion-dollar stakes in public companies such as Apple and American Express.

The legendary investor's track record of capitalizing on market crashes, and his company's scale and diversification, have made Berkshire a haven for investors who've pushed its stock up 8% this year.

5. Bernard Arnault

Net worth: $150 billion

3-day change: down $19 billion

Year-to-date change: down $26 billion

Bernard Arnault is the chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate. LVMH owns more than 75 brands spanning fashion, cosmetics, jewelry, and spirits, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Moët & Chandon.

LVMH's sales have come under pressure from flagging luxury demand in recent quarters.

6. Bill Gates

Net worth: $149 billion

3-day change: down $13 billion

Year-to-date change: down $10 billion

Bill Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft, though he stepped down from the board in 2020 and now owns only a small percentage of its shares. Most of his fortune is managed through Cascade Investment, a private firm that holds major stakes in companies like the Four Seasons Hotels.

Gates' primary focus is the Gates Foundation, a philanthropic powerhouse that supports global health, education, and climate initiatives.

7. Larry Ellison

Net worth: $147 billion

3-day change: down $21 billion

Year-to-date change: down $45 billion

Larry Ellison is the cofounder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer of Oracle, one of the world's largest software and cloud computing companies.

Ellison is also a major investor in Tesla and owns a large portion of Lanai, a Hawaiian island.

Along with OpenAI's Sam Altman and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, Ellison is spearheading Project Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative supported by Trump.

8. Larry Page

Net worth: $134 billion

3-day change: down $9 billion

Year-to-date change: down $35 billion

Larry Page is the cofounder of Google and a board member of its parent company, Alphabet. While he stepped down as Alphabet's CEO in 2019, he remains a major shareholder and influential figure.

Page is also a major backer of Kitty Hawk and Opener, companies that are developing electric flying vehicles.

9. Steve Ballmer

Net worth: $126 billion

3-day change: down $8 billion

Year-to-date change: down $20 billion

Steve Ballmer is the former CEO of Microsoft, a role he held from 2000 to 2014. He remains one of the company's largest individual shareholders with an estimated 4% stake.

Outside Microsoft, Ballmer also owns the Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA team he purchased in 2014 for $2 billion.

10. Sergey Brin

Net worth: $126 billion

3-day change: down $8 billion

Year-to-date change: down $33 billion

Sergey Brin is the cofounder of Google and played a key role in developing its early search algorithms. He served as president of Alphabet until stepping down in 2019.

Like Page, Brin retains significant influence at Alphabet through his Class B shares. Most of his net worth is tied to Alphabet stock.

• Bill Gates had one big question on his mind when he stepped down as CEO of Microsoft.
• He said he wondered, "Was I going to see the company fade in terms of its excellence?"
• Gates was succeeded first by Steve Ballmer and later by Satya Nadella, though he's become more involved amid the AI race.

It's not easy handing over the reins of the company you created — just ask Bill Gates.

Gates worried about the company's future when he ended his tenure as Microsoft's CEO in 2000, he said in an interview Microsoft posted Thursday.

"I've had two successors, and boy, do I feel lucky because as I went off to do the foundation work, the one thing that plagued me was, was I going to see the company fade in terms of its excellence, and would I be haunted by should I go back, should I not go back?" he said.

The billionaire Microsoft cofounder was succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer, who led the company from 2000 to 2014.

Gates wrote in his his memoir, "Source Code," which came out last month, that he gave a 4% stake to Ballmer to convince him to quit business school and join Microsoft. Once Ballmer came aboard in 1980, he "became the 24-hour-a-day partner I needed," Gates wrote.

Ballmer was later succeeded by Satya Nadella, who has held the role since taking over in 2014.

Gates says his fears were unfounded in hindsight since Ballmer "took us to new heights" and Nadella has done well at "navigating what even today remains one of the most complex CEO jobs in the world."

The company has notched several important milestones since Gates departed as CEO.

Its market cap has grown substantially, hitting a record $3 trillion dollars late last year. The company released the first Xbox in 2001 and has snapped up video game makers Mojang and Activision Blizzard. It also acquired companies like GitHub and LinkedIn. In recent years, it's poured billions into a partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

"It makes me feel so good that I get to just come in and play a very bit role of doing product reviews, learning about AI, you know, getting some help from Microsoft on the work that I'm doing," Gates added. "And it's allowed me, you know, to throw everything in and to have the incredible resources that my Microsoft ownership created."

While Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000, he continued to serve on the company's board of directors until 2020, when he stepped down following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees.

He has spent much of his time since on the philanthropic foundation he started with his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.

BI's Ashley Stewart reported last year that Gates remains "intimately involved in the company's operations" behind the scenes, reviewing products, advising on strategy, and recruiting top executives.

Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson, told BI at the time that Gates' role as a technical advisor, which he began in 2014, hadn't substantially changed since he vacated his board seat.

The "insistence on portraying the role of Bill Gates as 'pulling strings' at Microsoft," Shaw told BI at the time, "is fundamentally inaccurate and at odds with reality."

"With respect to Microsoft, stepping down from the board in no way means stepping away from the company," Gates wrote in 2020 about the move. "Microsoft will always be an important part of my life's work and I will continue to be engaged with Satya and the technical leadership to help shape the vision and achieve the company's ambitious goals."

• Eight tech titans have taken a $266 billion blow to their collective wealth this year.
• Their combined net worth fell by $64 billion on Monday as the Nasdaq had its worst day since 2022.
• Elon Musk has had $132 billion, or 30% of his fortune, erased in 2025 following Tesla's stock slide.

Eight tech billionaires have seen their combined fortunes shrink by an estimated $266 billion this year as President Donald Trump's policies continue to spook investors.

That figure exceeds the market value of most of America's largest companies including Salesforce, McDonald's, and Wells Fargo.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk leads the list of wealth losers, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The world's richest person has had $132 billion, or 30% of his fortune, wiped out in the past 10 weeks following the 45% slide in Tesla stock in that period.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies' Michael Dell, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang have each seen more than $20 billion erased from their respective net worths this year as their companies' stock prices have tumbled. Amazon and Oracle are both down about 11%, while Dell and Nvidia have slumped by north of 20%.

Rounding out the group are Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — down about $18 billion and $17 billion each this year following a 12% drop in shares of Google's parent company —and Steve Ballmer, who's down about $13 billion after a 10% decline in Microsoft stock.

The eight tech titans' collective net worth fell by $64 billion on Monday alone as the Nasdaq Composite slid 4%, its steepest one-day loss since 2022.

The sell-off was sparked by Trump cautioning there would be a "period of transition" for the US economy in a Fox News interview on Sunday.

The president didn't rule out a recession when asked if he expected one this year. He said his focus was on strengthening America and achieving long-term prosperity: "You can't really watch the stock market."

Trump's sweeping economic agenda is focused on equalizing US trade relations using tariffs, curtailing immigration, lifting regulations, cutting taxes, and downsizing the federal government. His policies have reignited inflation fears and stoked recession worries.

The increased uncertainty has dampened the buzz around AI that had lifted tech stocks and the wider market to record highs this year. One consequence is the world's 16 wealthiest people are worth $236 billion less than they were at the start of January after a $87 billion decline on Monday, per Bloomberg's rich list.

Microsoft's Bill Gates and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg were still up between $4 billion and $5 billion for the year at Monday's close. The Facebook cofounder took a $9.5 billion wealth hit on the day — second only to Musk's $29 billion blow.

Three others on the list are in the green for 2025 as they're less exposed to tech: Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett is up about $14 billion, while LVMH's Bernard Arnault and Inditex's Amancio Ortega are up between $6 billion and $7 billion.

The richest of the rich shouldn't feel too sorry for themselves, as they had a stellar 2024. The top 10 billionaires at the end of December were up more than $500 billion for the year, and worth a combined $2 trillion — about as much as Amazon or Alphabet.

• Bill Gates details his early relationship with Steve Ballmer in his new "Source Code" memoir.
• Ballmer mirrored Gates' energy, boosted his social life, and became the business partner he needed.
• Gates gave Ballmer a 4% stake in Microsoft that's now worth more than $120 billion.

Bill Gates found a kindred spirit, a social connector, a confidant, a study buddy, and a true business partner in Steve Ballmer, he writes in his new memoir, "Source Code: My Beginnings."

Gates, the billionaire philanthropist who cofounded Microsoft, met Ballmer in a graduate economics class in the fall of 1976, when the pair were undergraduates at Harvard University.

The computing pioneer had heard from a friend that "Steve's a lot like you," and instantly recognized that Ballmer shared his "excess energy."

"Steve Ballmer had it beyond anyone I had ever known," Gates writes.

Ballmer was different from many of the students in Gates' dorm building, "nerdy math-science types" who largely socialized by playing Pong or poker in the basement.

"He had an unusual combination of brains and physicality and was effortlessly social," Gates writes, noting Ballmer managed the university's football team, oversaw advertising at its student newspaper, and was president of its literary magazine.

The future software tycoon recalled attending a football game and seeing Ballmer "expend just as much energy pacing and bouncing on the sidelines" as anyone on the field.

Gates writes that Ballmer widened his social circle and helped secure his entry into the exclusive Fox Club, known for its "black-tie parties, secret handshakes, and other archaic rules and rituals" that Gates would usually have avoided.

Microsoft's first CEO writes that he and his future successor spoke late at night about their life goals, whether it was better to work for the government or a company, and how they could improve society and maximize their impact on the world.

They also skipped most of their economics lectures, crammed together for the final, and were "triumphant" when they passed.

Bringing Ballmer on board

Gates had founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. They initially had a 60-40 split, but Gates felt he was more committed to building the company so he negotiated with Allen to make it 64-36.

He also realized he needed an around-the-clock business partner to talk through key decisions, pore over customer lists, manage the company's finances, and help him with "shouldering a hundred things like that every week."

Gates eventually gave his additional 4% stake to Ballmer to convince him to quit business school for Microsoft. "He joined in 1980 and became the 24-hour-a-day partner I needed," Gates wrote.

Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft CEO in 2000 and still owned 4% of the company when he stepped down in 2014, regulatory filings show.

The LA Clippers owner's stake is worth more than $120 billion, and makes up the bulk of his estimated $145 billion net worth — putting him in 10th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, just behind Warren Buffett and only three spots behind Gates.

• Bill Gates has gifted $100 billion of his personal fortune to good causes so far, he told the BBC.
• Microsoft's cofounder is the world's seventh-richest person with a net worth of about $164 billion.
• Gates said his philanthropy hasn't forced him to "order less movies or less hamburgers."

Bill Gates says he's given away $100 billion of his personal fortune so far.

The Microsoft cofounder and Gates Foundation chair revealed the scale of his philanthropy to the BBC on Monday.

Despite his extensive giving, Gates is the world's seventh-richest person, with an estimated $164 billion net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

"I still have more to give," Gates told the BBC. "I will give away the vast majority of my money; it's my full-time focus for the rest of my life, and I enjoy it."

As of Wednesday's close, he's two spots ahead of longtime friend Warren Buffett, worth $148 billion, and three places above Steve Ballmer, his former assistant and successor as Microsoft CEO, worth $144 billion.

Ignoring any investment gains and all else being equal, if Gates had another $100 billion to his name, he would be worth $264 billion. That would make him wealthier than Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, number two and three on the rich list with respective fortunes of $255 billion and $248 billion. He would be the world's second-richest person, behind only Tesla's Elon Musk, worth $414 billion.

For comparison, Buffett has given nearly 57% of his Class A shares of Berkshire to the Gates Foundation and four of his family's foundations since 2006. The gifts, based on when they were received, total about $56 billion, but the same shares are worth $189 billion today.

Buffett is 25 years older than Gates, meaning the technology pioneer is likely to have more time to distribute his fortune. Buffett, Gates, and Gates' then-wife, Melinda, established the Giving Pledge in 2006 to encourage the world's wealthiest people to commit the majority of their fortunes to charitable causes.

Gates told the BBC that parting ways with $100 billion hasn't required him to give up anything at all.

"I made no personal sacrifice," he said. "I didn't order less hamburgers or less movies."

Gates — who published a memoir this week titled "Source Code: My Beginnings" — has previously called for higher taxes on the uber-wealthy, saying people like him should be about a third as rich as they are. But Sen. Bernie Sanders needled him in a recent conversation about why he wanted to remain a multi-billionaire.

"How much do you deserve? Can you make it on a billion? Think you could feed the family? Probably. Pay the rent? Maybe," the progressive senator quipped.

Gates owned about 1.3% of Microsoft prior to stepping down as a director in 2020, regulatory disclosures show. The bulk of his fortune is now in a holding company named Cascade Investment, which he funded with Microsoft stock sales and dividends.

• The world's wealthiest people have shuffled their ranks and seen their fortunes surge since 2000.
• Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, and Steve Ballmer held top-20 spots then and still do.
• Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg didn't rank in the top 20 less than 25 years ago.

Compare the wealthiest people on the planet today to a quarter-century ago, and it's striking to see how the fortunes have grown, and most of the names have changed.

Bill Gates topped Forbes' rundown of the world's richest people in 2000, the earliest list accessible using the Wayback Machine. The Microsoft cofounder's net worth has grown from $60 billion then to $105 billion at Tuesday's close — good for 15th place in the real-time rankings.

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Walmart heir Rob Walton, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and LVMH founder and CEO Bernard Arnault also made the top 20 then and still do today.

But retaining a top 20 spot has required them to grow dramatically more wealthy since 2000. For example, Ellison's net worth has more than quadrupled from $47 billion to $217 billion.

Buffett's fortune has grown more than five-fold from about $26 billion to $143 billion, despite the investor gifting over half of his Berkshire shares to good causes since 2006.

Walton and Dell's fortunes have more than quintupled in size from roughly $20 billion to well above $100 billion.

Ballmer and Arnault have notched even larger gains, with their net worths growing from about $16 billion and $13 billion each to $128 billion and $168 billion, respectively.

Meanwhile, SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son's wealth has only grown from about $19 billion to $30 billion, dropping him from eighth place to 59th.

Several other people have fallen out of the top 10. They include Gates' late cofounder, Paul Allen; Theo and Karl Albrecht, the brothers who cofounded supermarket giant Aldi; Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia; and newspaper tycoon Kenneth Thompson.

On the other hand, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang now rank in the top 10.

While a $20 billion fortune would have landed someone firmly in the top 10 in 2000, a net worth of that magnitude barely cracks the top 100 nowadays.

The top 10 wealthiest individuals were worth a combined $275 billion in 2000, or about one-seventh of their $2 trillion in total wealth at Tuesday's close. The 20 richest people were worth $406 billion then, a fraction of the $3 trillion they're worth today.

Musk alone is worth $454 billion today, exceeding the combined wealth of the top 20 in 2000.

The consistency between the two lists shows how companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, Berkshire Hathaway, Dell, and Walmart have gained value over the course of decades, enabling their largest shareholders to retain their top 10 spots almost a quarter-century later.

But it also underscores how businesses like Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla, Meta, and Nvidia have skyrocketed in value and propelled their biggest backers into top 10 positions.

• Steve Ballmer said his investment strategy is partly influenced by Warren Buffett.
• But Ballmer, whose net worth is larger than Buffett's, has an unconventional investment portfolio.
• More than 80% of Ballmer's portfolio is held in Microsoft stock, per The Wall Street Journal.

Steve Ballmer has an unorthodox investing approach.

The former Microsoft CEO is worth $151 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the ninth richest person the world.

That puts him ahead of famed investor Warren Buffett by a nearly $10 billion margin.

In an interview published Sunday, Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal that his investment strategy is partly influenced by Buffett, who has long said that since most people picking stocks cannot beat the returns of a general index fund. But there's one key difference.

The Journal reported that Ballmer keeps more than 80% of his portfolio in Microsoft stock. The rest is held in index funds. Ballmer declined to say how large his stake is in Microsoft.

"Microsoft's outperformed just about every other asset I could have owned," Ballmer told the Journal.

Ballmer's investment strategy goes against conventional wisdom, which suggests that people reduce their risk by diversifying their capital across different asset classes. And the world's wealthiest people typically go beyond stocks and bonds to invest in non-liquid assets like private equity and real estate. Ballmer said he is "mostly dialing out of private equity."

To be sure, Ballmer wasn't always going against the trend.

The 68-year-old tried diversifying in the past but said he struggled to find money managers who consistently beat the market.

"The only stock I really study still is Microsoft, because that's still overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly the No. 1 thing that I own," Balmer told the outlet.

Ballmer began his career at Microsoft in 1980 and succeeded founder Bill Gates as CEO in 2000.

According to regulatory filings, Ballmer held 333 million shares, or a 4% stake, in Microsoft when he stepped down as CEO in 2014.

Microsoft's shares are up 16.1% this year. The Seattle-based tech giant has been in front of the AI race with huge bets on startups like Sam Altman's OpenAI and France's Mistral AI.

In October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an earnings call that the company's AI business is on track to top an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion next quarter.

This would make it the fastest business in Microsoft's history to reach that milestone, Nadella added.

Ballmer attributes his bumper gains in Microsoft's stock to luck.

"Forget the stock price. I had luck, essentially, in getting to listen to the right people," Ballmer told the Journal.

"But I also had luck in terms of my loyalty to the company and not wanting to be a seller as a leader of the business. It turned out to be a great investment thing, too," he added.

Ballmer did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.