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The wealth of US tycoons exceeded $ 360 billion during the pandemic, according to The Washington Post.
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The leaders of Oracle and Dell are among the other technology billionaires who profited last year.
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Its wealth has attracted scrutiny amid systemic inequality in the United States.
The pandemic was a crisis for many, but not for America’s wealthiest billionaires.
The wealth of nine of the country’s biggest tech titans exceeded $ 360 billion last year, The Washington Post reported.
The title of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as the richest person in the world, was challenged as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, more than quintupled his wealth. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg surpassed the $ 100 billion mark. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin acquired a combined fortune of $ 65 billion.
Apple’s market capitalization surpassed the $ 2 trillion mark last year, making its CEO, Tim Cook, a billionaire, according to The Washington Post.
Amazon profited substantially from online shopping for people during the pandemic. Consumer demand at the start of the crisis was so high that Amazon and other retailers faced a shortage of supplies of items such as toilet paper and disinfectant.
As companies switched to remote work models, employees relied more on cloud computing services, where customers rent data storage from companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Google and Facebook also benefited from a recovery in online marketing, as well as the need for sustainable communication tools, which included Google Classroom and Facebook-owned WhatsApp, according to The Washington Post.
Wealthy consumers, who were less likely to be unemployed during the pandemic, benefited from an increase in disposable income by staying at home, helping Tesla’s shares rise 547% last year.
These tech titans are not the only billionaires whose wealth has increased. According to Yahoo Finance, Oracle’s chief executive and CTO, Larry Ellison, saw his net worth rise from $ 59 billion to $ 90.3 billion last year. The net worth of Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies, increased from $ 22.9 billion to $ 44.4 billion in the same period.
The significant increase in their earnings contrasts sharply with the economic destruction faced by millions of Americans, as unemployment and evictions soared. This highlighted deeply rooted social issues of inequality and the ever-widening wealth gap.
A recent report also showed that American billionaires could finance two-thirds of Biden’s COVID-19 aid package using only the profits generated during the pandemic.
Read the original article on Business Insider