Source: in-cyprus.philenews.com
Five of the world’s richest men lost billions on Thursday as a sweeping sell-off in artificial intelligence stocks hammered tech shares.
The combined wealth of five technology chiefs fell by $26bn in a single day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The losses hit Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang and Michael Dell.
Their fortunes shrank as the value of their stakes in Tesla, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia and Dell Technologies fell. Shares in the first four companies dropped by about 2% on Thursday as investors fretted over the vast cost of building AI infrastructure and questioned whether they would ultimately see a return on that spending.
Dell shares plunged 9% after rival Lenovo warned that a shortage of memory chips is driving up costs, fuelling concerns on Wall Street that profits at other manufacturers could also shrink. The slide wiped $5bn from the founder’s wealth.
Musk took the heaviest hit. His fortune fell by an unprecedented $8bn on Thursday. Even so, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX remains up about $57bn this year, buoyed by rising valuations at SpaceX and his other company, xAI.
Zuckerberg lost almost $7bn in a single day, while Bezos shed $4bn and Huang $2.5bn.
Other technology executives also saw their wealth decline. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Alphabet, lost about $1.5bn as shares in Google’s parent slipped by less than 1%.
By contrast, shares in Walmart climbed nearly 4% to a record high on Thursday as concerns over tariffs eased. The rise added more than $4bn to the combined wealth of founder Sam Walton’s three children: Jim Walton, Rob Walton and Alice Walton.
(information from naftemporiki.gr)