The “Google Guys” have got their groove back.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the world’s second- and third-biggest wealth gainers this year as of Monday’s close, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows.
The Alphabet cofounders have respectively grown $66 billion and $60.7 billion richer in just under 10 months, outpacing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $56.8 billion gain and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s $51.9 billion gain. The pair only trail Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison’s $150 billion increase.
Page and Brin are now worth $234 billion and $219 billion each, ranking them fifth and sixth on Bloomberg’s rich list — not far behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in fourth with a $250 billion fortune.
They hold significant leads over the rest of the top 10: LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Huang, and PC pioneer Michael Dell have net worths between $150 billion and $200 billion.
Page and Brin are worth a combined $453 billion, a figure that rivals the $466 billion fortune of the planet’s richest person, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Their joint fortune also exceeds the market capitalizations of some of America’s biggest and best-known companies, including Costco at $412 billion and Bank of America at $389 billion.
Google’s creators have seen a sharp upturn in their fortunes since the summer. In late July, Page and Brin had gained less than $5 billion each since the start of the year, putting their net worths at around $170 billion and $160 billion respectively.
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They’ve both grown over $55 billion richer since then, thanks to Alphabet stock surging 40% in the past three months to record highs of above $270 a share. Page and Brin each own around 6% of the $3.3 trillion conglomerate, which counts Google, YouTube, Waymo, and DeepMind among its businesses.
Alphabet shares surged in September after a federal judge ruled in an antitrust case that Google wouldn’t have to sell its Chrome browser or Android operating system, removing a major overhang from the stock. Alphabet shares also jumped last week after the company struck a huge deal with Anthropic, assuaging fears it could become an also-ran in the AI race.
Buzzy partnerships, multibillion-dollar contracts, and forecasts of rapid growth have spurred investors to bet big on AI giants such as Oracle and Nvidia, driving up their stock prices and enriching their largest shareholders. Alphabet’s Page and Brin are the latest beneficiaries of the boom.
