5 Head honchos of tech industry: US Dominates World's richest

Picture: Forbes.

Technology sector still has one of the richest individuals in the world, disregarding global economic upheaval and volatility of currencies following Brexit. With the USA dominating the list and only two Asians according to the recent Forbes' 'richest people in tech' top ten.

Forbes is a popular and trusted business magazine, every year, it reveals and lists some of the wealthiest individuals and families worldwide.

People who make it to the top in biz tech, can thank the rapid growth of tech commercial enterprise, e-commerce and technology innovations.

Picture: Forbes.

Among the richest people in tech are too, this year, 2016 regular names and well-known faces as previous years. Bill Gates is no stranger in top of Forbes list, the Microsoft founder, in 2008 was momentarily dethroned by fellow American, friend and billionaire investor, Warren Buffet, from being the richest man in the world after a 13-year-long reign.

Gates not only tops the list in tech, but he is currently the wealthiest man on earth. The 60-year-old philanthropist stepped down as Microsoft's chairman in 2014 to become the software giant's adviser.

L-R: Gates, Ellison & Bezos.

#1 Bill Gates $78b USA

#2 Jeff Bezos $66.2b USA

#3 Mark Zuckerberg $54b USA

#4 Larry Ellison $51.7b USA

#5 Larry Page $39b USA

#8 Jack Ma $25.8b China

#9 Ma Huateng $22b China

However, that is all in the past, there are new kids in the block, digital and Internet-based new tech start-ups, and youngest self-made tech billionaires. Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is 3rd behind Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos.

Youngest in the top ten, the Facebook chief first made it to the Forbes list as the youngest billionaire in 2008 at the age of 23, with an estimated net of $1.5 billion.

E-commerce, ads, cloud computing and online-shopping making the constituents of the industry, Amazon.com Inc, dominates many, if not most of the aforementioned essentials of tech realm.

Bezos, said to have contributed immensely in the electronic commerce, web services, or online retail, and according to several observers, Amazon has superseded Wal-Mart stores Inc.

This week, probably in retaliation, Wal-Mart caused an upset in the e-commerce industry by acquiring online retailer Jet.com for $3.3 billion. In 2015, Time magazine reported that Jet, with its low cost prices could possibly be "Amazon-killer,” businessinsider reported.

Zuckerberg's Facebook is known to have caused a lot of buzz when it purchased popular cross-platform mobile messenger WhatsApp for a whooping $22 billion.

Facebook, also acquired and owns Instagram ($1bn buyout) and the augmented reality headset system, Oculus Rift, a 2014 $2bn acquisition - these are one of the fastest ventures of magnitude by Facebook, WhatsApp included.

In App store and many other app marketplace, Facebook and its applications are the most downloaded and used; Facebook, WhatsApp Messenger, Messenger, and Instagram.

For every amount Facebook offers to smaller startup companies to join the social media giant, that is more extraordinary control of shares for the social media giant.

Coming in at 4^th , another American tech entrepreneur, Larry Ellison, is Estate investor, co-founder and former CEO of Oracle Corp. Ellison is the 7^th richest man in the world.

Oracle is one of the largest software developing companies in the world, close arch-rival of Microsoft. The pervasive and popular software platform, Java, is developed by Sun Microsystems, a subsidiary of Oracle.

After his announcement to step down as Oracle's CEO, the 71-year-old announced that Oracle, was going to concentrate on cloud-computing. Bloomberg reported that Oracle was behind when it comes to cloud computing and providing its services over the internet. The software giant is set to acquire NetSuite for $9.3 billion.

Talking to Bloomberg, Bill Kreher, analyst at Edward Jones & Co., said: “NetSuite is really pioneering cloud and this will certainly add to Oracle”.

Alphabet Inc. is notably and arguably the biggest multinational conglomerate that is known to have created frenzy in the tech industry and no doubt owns many of the popular online platforms and applications.

Picture: Reuters.

Co-founded by Google's duo Serge Brin and Larry Page, Alphabet, is a newly created parent company of Google and many of its subsidiaries, including YouTube, Android, and Chrome browser among others.

Page and Brin make Forbes list number #5 and #6 respectively. Page is currently Alphabet's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Brin is the President and Eric Schmidt, once Google's CEO, is now Alphabet's executive chairman and is ranked #19 on Forbes richest people in tech.

The Alphabet trio.

Jack Ma of Alibaba.com and Ma Huateng are the only Asian businessmen in the Forbes top ten richest people in tech. Ma is China's richest man (with riches worth $25.8 billion) and Huateng coming second with a networth of $22 billion. 

Jack Ma.