How much does Zuckerberg earn? The story of Mark Zuckerberg: make billions and give it all away (at least promise)

Mark Eliot Zuckerberg(English Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, in English transcription Zuckerberg) is an American entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies, one of the developers and founders social network Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg today is the head of Facebook Inc, a billionaire; his fortune in 2017 exceeded $74 billion.

Childhood and education of Mark Zuckerberg

Father - Edward Zuckerberg- practicing dentist. He did not give up his career as a doctor even after his son became a billionaire.

Mother - Karen Zuckerberg- psychiatrist.

The Zuckerberg family has four children. Mark, the only boy, was the second child. Mark's sisters - Randy, Donna, Ariel.

In the photo: Mark Zuckerberg with his sisters (Photo: instagram.com/zuck)

The biographies say that parents immediately noticed Mark Zuckerberg's great abilities. But he was raised in religious strictness, as was customary in Jewish families. But, apparently, something didn’t work out with religion, because now Mark openly tells everyone that he is an atheist.

Edward Zuckerberg gave his son his first PC (Quantex 486DX based on the Intel 486 processor) when Mark was 10 years old. Edward Zuckerberg had plans to give Mark good education. He was the first to teach his son the Atari BASIC programming language.

Mark sat at the computer for hours. His friends brought their primitive drawings, and Mark Zuckerberg created his first computer games. According to the writer Jose Antonio Vargas, when "some kids played computer games, Mark created them."

As a schoolboy, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple, but quite acceptable software product ZuckNet. Mark's father was delighted with his son's creation and installed ZuckNet in his office, allowing him to communicate with his assistant from home. Zuckerberg's ZuckNet is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.

And little Zuckerberg came up with a computer version of the then popular game “Risk.”

Edward Zuckerberg hired a private tutor for his son, who immediately realized that it was already quite difficult to stay ahead of the knowledge of this prodigy Zuckerberg Jr., who clearly had a career as an excellent programmer.

Mark Zuckerberg began his education at Ardsley School, then moved to the private school Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. There Mark was the first student in mathematics, astronomy, physics, natural sciences, foreign languages ​​- there was time for all of this. When entering college, Mark Zuckerberg indicated that he speaks French, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek. Mark's friends recalled how easily he could quote passages from the Iliad in the original. In addition, Mark was actively involved in fencing, excelled in this sport and was captain of the school fencing team.

And yet Mark Zuckerberg put programming first. His abilities, which have now manifested themselves in development software, attracted attention. While still receiving secondary education, Mark Zuckerberg developed the Synapse music player, which combined elements of artificial intelligence.

Programmer career Mark Zuckerberg

After graduating from school, Mark Zuckerberg entered the prestigious Harvard University, choosing, on the advice of his mother, to major in psychology. But programming continued to fascinate Mark. While still in his second year at university, he created a program for students, CourseMatch, which helped students at the beginning of each semester in choosing the courses they would like to study. Using CourseMatch, they could see the number of students enrolled in a given course and the names of those who had already signed up for it, allowing them to make informed choices. Zuckerberg's second project was Facemash, which played main role in Mark's biography.

In the photo (left): Mark Zuckerberg begins his studies at Harvard University. Pictured (right): receiving a degree at Harvard University (Photo: AP/TASS)

A talented young man decided to use the Facemash software to create a communication masterpiece in the form of the social network “Facebook”, which was supposed to expand the communication of Harvard students across local network. His fellow students helped him with this Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin And Dustin Mockowitz. As friends recall, Mark did all this for fun.

By the way, Mark Zuckerberg had the idea for Facebook while he was receiving secondary education at the Phillips Exeter Academy private school in New Hampshire. This school had its own Facebook or “book of faces,” a directory with names, addresses and photographs of students. At Harvard, Zuckerberg took the initiative to create a similar online resource, but he was refused, citing privacy policy. I had to create Facebook for the whole world at once.

But first, after Zuckerberg hacked into protected sections of the Harvard University computer network and copied private photos, the site was closed by the administration and Mark was accused of violating security, copyright, and integrity privacy. Zuckerberg had to apologize.

Facebook Career

However, he appreciated the scale of the idea and already on February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook at thefacebook.com. Zuckerberg left Harvard and invested all the money his parents had saved ($85,000) into the social network—he saw it as the best way to develop his career. In 2004, having moved to Palo Alto, Zuckerberg registered his project as legal entity, becoming CEO of Facebook.

Zuckerberg, Moskowitz and other friends moved to Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, where they rented a small house that served as an office. Initially, they thought about returning to Harvard, but work dragged on.

At this stage, among Zuckerberg's friends, a role in the successful development of his career was played by Sean Parker, who found the first investors of Facebook - the founder of the PayPal system Peter Thiel And Reed Hoffman. Parker ensured that Mark Zuckerberg retained 3 of the 5 seats on the board of directors.

In 2005, Mark Zuckerberg purchased the Facebook.com domain for $200 thousand, and managed to get rid of article The. At that time, the social network already had more than 5 million users.

In the photo: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Photo: DPA/TASS)

Finally, in 2007 year Microsoft valued Mark Zuckerberg's project at $15 billion and acquired a 1.6% stake in the company for $240 million. Further, the career of Zuckerberg and his brainchild only gained momentum.

In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg visited Russia. The billionaire took part in two programs on Channel One and spoke to students at Moscow State University. At the Moscow Facebook World Hack developer conference, Zuckerberg named the main advantage for developers as access to an audience of almost a billion people, this is the maximum number of users on the Internet.

In the photo: founder and CEO of the social network Facebook Mark Zuckerberg while walking along Red Square (Photo: Facebook press service/TASS)

In 2015, Facebook became the second most visited site in the world, the number of social network users reached one and a half billion people.

And Mark Zuckerberg was the youngest dollar billionaire With official salary...at 1 dollar. The programmer also won the “titles” of one of the most influential people on the planet and the most successful businessman under the age of 40.

In the fall of 2018, Free Press wrote that Mark Zuckerberg could lose his post on Facebook. The news reported that the idea was put forward by Facebook investors back in June, and then some came out against Mark investment funds who own shares of the company.

Personal life of Mark Zuckerberg

The founder of the social network Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, one of richest people world, in his personal life he is an absolute monogamist - since his student days he has been dating an old girlfriend Priscilla Chan.

In the photo: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan (Photo: AP/TASS)

Priscilla Chan was born on February 24, 1985. Her parents were Chinese refugees who fled Vietnam by boat. Zuckerberg's wife is a pediatrician by training. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she studied at Harvard University and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Sophomore Mark Zuckerberg met his future wife at a fraternity party at Harvard. Since 2003, Mark and Priscilla began dating. In 2010 future wife moved in with Zuckerberg in Palo Alto.

On May 19, 2012, Mark Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan. The couple celebrated Priscilla's receiving her doctorate in medicine, but when close friends and family members showed up in the backyard of the couple's Palo Alto home, they were told they were attending a wedding. As the couple's representative said, the wedding was not timed to coincide with Facebook's IPO, but rather to coincide with the end of Priscilla's education.

On December 2, 2015, the couple had a daughter, Maxima Chan (Max), and on August 28, 2017, a second daughter, named August.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took maternity leave due to the birth of his second daughter.

In the photo: Mark Zuckerberg with his wife and daughters (Photo: instagram.com/zuck)

“I will spend one month of vacation with my wife and girls, and then we will spend a whole month together in December,” he wrote on his Facebook page. At the end of his message, Zuckerberg joked that he hoped his office would be "standing still" when he returned.

Mark Zuckerberg did the same after the birth of his first daughter. Zuckerberg explained this decision by the results of studies according to which the temporary departure of parents from work after the birth of a child has positive influence for the family as a whole.

Zuckerberg's wife is a Buddhist; Mark himself has become a less zealous atheist over the years, in particular, he noted the importance of religion, including Buddhism.

Mark Zuckerberg's income

Mark Zuckerberg's net worth as of February 2016 Forbes version amounted to almost 50 billion dollars. And by the end of 2017, income from Facebook made Mark even richer; as of November 2017, Zuckerberg’s fortune was estimated at $74.2 billion. He is one of the five richest people in the world.

In the photo: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Photo: AP/TASS)

Today marks the 35th anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and head of the largest social platform Facebook (it is used by more than half of all Internet users in the world). The startup created by a Harvard student has reached a fantastic market capitalization of half a trillion dollars - this is slightly less than the total value of the top 100 Russian companies. The businessman himself has long been on the list of the richest people in the world, but intends to spend almost all of his fortune on charity. We'll tell you how Zuckerberg came to success and why his subordinates dote on him (it's not just about free cookies).

Coder, polyglot, atheist

The man who was destined to create one of the 3 most visited sites in the world was born into a family of Jewish believers, but already at an early conscious age he declared his atheism. His father worked as a dentist, and in his free time he learned the basics of programming on Atari. It was thanks to him that little Zuckerberg became interested in computer technologies- the boy received his first computer at the age of 9 (it was a Quantex 486DX with an Intel 486 processor and the Windows 3.1 operating system).

First teaching aid The brand name for programming has become the book “C++ for Dummies.” He himself claimed that he gained most of his knowledge in this area from communicating with friends (although it is known that he had a private tutor).

At 12, Mark created the instant messaging program ZuckNet. Zuckerberg Sr. liked it so much that he used it in his dental office to communicate with family and patients (by the way, the famous AOL Instant Messenger appeared a year later).

In addition to coding, young Zuckerberg was interested in fencing and languages ​​(he studied French, Hebrew and Latin). At school, he easily quoted passages from the Iliad in the original.

In high school, Mark wrote an app called Synapse Media Player, an MP3 player that tracked a user's favorite songs and created playlists based on those selections (essentially an early version of Spotify or Pandora). AOL and Microsoft became interested in the project. Both companies offered jobs to Zuckerberg, but he turned them down to attend Harvard.

Subsequent events showed that Zuckerberg did right choice. It was while studying at Harvard that he was destined to create the website that made him famous and brought him a huge fortune.

At university, Mark continued to code and launched 3 online services. The first was CourseMatch, which helped students choose disciplines based on what their friends were enrolled in. Next came Facemash, which allowed you to compare photos of students and vote for the most attractive (this caused dissatisfaction with the administration). Finally, along with fellow students Divya Narendra and twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Mark worked on Harvard Connection, a dating site for students. It was this project that inspired Zuckerberg to create Facebook, although his partners thought differently - they accused the creator of the social network of stealing their idea and eventually sued $65 million. Subsequently, Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers sued Mark again over the prices of his company's securities, but lost the case in 2011.

Dropped out of Harvard and became a billionaire

In the first months of the site’s operation, there was simply no money for its development. My father helped out: he invested $85 thousand in the social network, a significant part of which was spent on the purchase of servers. Subsequently, this investment paid off for Zuckerberg Sr. with 2 million Facebook shares received from his son.

The social network's audience grew rapidly. In the first year of operation, Facebook reached 1 million monthly active users. To manage the project, Mark dropped out of school and moved to Silicon Valley, but his girlfriend Priscilla Chan refused to follow him to California (her emigrant parents spent half their lives earning Harvard for their daughter). However, the couple maintained their relationship - their wedding took place the day after the Facebook IPO in May 2012. By then, Zuckerberg had long been a billionaire.

The social network brought its creator the first big money in October 2007. Then Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million, which allowed many media outlets to value the company at $15 billion. However, some analysts and even investors in the social network considered this amount too high. The compilers of the Forbes list for 2008 shared the same opinion - they assigned Zuckerberg only 785th place, estimating his fortune at $1.5 billion.

Interesting facts about Zuckerberg

Due to color blindness, Mark cannot distinguish between red and green colors, so he decided that the design color of his social network would be blue.

The founder of Facebook was one of the first to set up a page on Google+. At the same time, Zuckerberg said that this service corresponds to his vision of what social networks should be. In the first year of public operation of the platform, Mark became its most popular user, surpassing even the co-founders in subscribers Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

But investors had shown interest in Facebook before, and some were not averse to buying the project outright. From 2004 to 2007, Zuckerberg refused to acquire the social network from several Wall Street financiers, the Friendster service, MySpace (and then NewsCorp that absorbed it), as well as such monsters as Viacom, AOL, NBC, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. “I only think about how to build and strengthen my business, and not about how to sell it. I think our work is much more interesting than many people's. We just like to do our own thing. I never thought about selling the company,” Zuckerberg later said.

Before Facebook's initial public offering in 2012, Forbes already estimated Zuckerberg's fortune at $17.5 billion, based on rumors, the opinions of the company's investors and other experts. The social network's IPO became the largest in the history of Internet companies at that time: capitalization reached $104 billion, and trading brought in $16 billion. But the colossal excitement was followed by a crisis of overvaluation. The very next year, the company's shares lost more than 40% in price - as a result, Mark's fortune dropped to $13.3 billion.

Thanks to the rapid growth of his audience and powerful monetization, Zuckerberg quickly made up for lost time - in 2014 he already owned $34 billion. But at the end of 2018, he again lost $18.7 billion - more than all other billionaires on the Forbes list. One of the main reasons was the data on the decline in Facebook’s annual and quarterly revenue growth rates - back in 2017, they ceased to impress analysts, which was reflected in their forecasts and affected the value of the company’s shares.

Currently, Zuckerberg controls 4 of the 6 largest social platforms in the world. These are Facebook (2.3 billion), WhatsApp (1.6 billion), Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion) and Instagram (1 billion). The remaining two are video hosting YouTube (1.9 billion) and messenger WeChat (1 billion). By the way, the monthly audience of the entire Internet as a whole is 4.4 billion people.

Live on 1%

In December 2015, Mark and his wife Priscilla Chan pledged to donate almost all of their personal fortune to charity during their lifetime. They were prompted to do this by the birth of their first daughter, who was named Max. On the day of her birth, the new father made a powerful statement on his Facebook page: “This is a world where our generation can advance human potential and advance equality - curing diseases, personalizing learning, harnessing clean energy, bringing people together, building strong communities, reducing poverty, ensuring equal rights and promoting understanding among peoples. We want to make our small contribution to creating such a world for all children.”

To be precise, Mark and Priscilla plan to donate 99% of their Facebook shares to charity. At the time of publication of their statement, it was about $45 billion.

Since 2013, Zuckerberg has been developing another non-profit project- Internet.org. Thanks to it, hundreds of millions of residents of developing countries receive free access to a number of popular Internet services. But the businessman still receives some benefit from this - the colossal audience of the world’s most popular social network is growing with users from third world countries. It’s no coincidence that critics are calling Zuckerberg’s initiative “a Facebook proxy for India’s poor.”

Dream boss

In a 2013 Glassdoor survey, Mark Zuckerberg received the highest employee approval rating - 99% of his subordinates supported him and considered him a good boss. Subsequently, the figure changed, but only slightly (the minimum value was 93% in 2014). One of Facebook's programmer-engineers, Amir Memon, formulated 9 reasons for such adoration.

Story: he launched a billion-user, billion-dollar business from his dorm room, overcame many obstacles one by one, and built a company with the most talented employees in the world.

- Not exactly a coincidence, more like remarkable fact: Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the Forbes list the same year that Bill Gates lost his title as the world's richest person for the first time.

Heart: he is one of the largest philanthropists and, moreover, an ascetic. It is heavily invested in an initiative to develop the Internet in poor countries - although this is not contributing to short-term revenue growth. We really feel like he wants to make a difference in the world.

Courage: What other CEO would be brave enough to buy a messaging app for $19 billion? This is a very smart investment for many different reasons, but still $19 billion! Even other Silicon Valley bosses recognize Zuckerberg's fearlessness.

Wisdom: when he speaks, our brains are seriously strained. He has supernatural ability accept true strategic decisions, and when he explains them step by step, you just understand that he is right about everything. Of course, mistakes happen, but he makes decisions for the right reasons.

Trust: Not all decisions are made by him alone. He trusts us with the right to independently manage the features for which we are responsible - to do exactly what, in our opinion, will be best for users. This is in stark contrast to the vertical management style of many other companies. We're pleased with Facebook's balance between top-down decisions and bottom-up initiatives.

Image: he wears T-shirts and jeans, speaks modestly and is approachable. We like it.

Business: Facebook is a solid company with rapidly growing revenues.

Free food and other bonuses: yes, it makes us love him and the company. He has the opportunity to end this at any time, but he does not use it. If someone gives me free cookies, I start liking them, it's a pretty simple equation.

The creator of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, managed to earn six billion dollars in a day and immediately moved up two places in the ranking of the richest people in the world. Now he ranks sixth, and his fortune is estimated at $47.6 billion.

According to Bloomberg, In just one day, Zuckerberg's fortune grew by $6.2 billion. At the same time, the founder of Facebook, apparently, did not even leave the house and posted photos with his daughter. Such an impressive income is explained by an increase in the value of shares of the social network against the backdrop of published data on record quarterly revenue.

ON THE TOPIC

The day before, Facebook presented its financial report for the fourth quarter and the entire year 2015, which turned out to be extremely successful. With the opening of the trading session on the NASDAQ stock exchange, the social network’s quotes soared by 14%. This allowed Zuckerberg to increase his fortune to $47.6 billion and surpass the co-owners of Koch Industries, brothers David and Charles Koch, in the ranking of the richest people, who dropped to seventh place in the Bloomberg index.

Richer founder of Facebook there are only five people in the world now – creator of Microsoft Bill Gates, Inditex CEO Amancio Ortega, investor Warren Buffett, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and telecom magnate Carlos Slim.

It is noteworthy that Zuckerberg became one of three billionaires in the top 20 who managed to increase their wealth since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the top five lost a total of more than $24 billion this month. Note that general condition The 400 billionaires reach $3.7 trillion (as of January 27), although back in May 2015 its size was $4.3 trillion.

The past year has been a terrible one for Mark Zuckerberg. Scandals involving leakage of user data will apparently haunt Facebook and the creator of the social network for a long time. However, the year was not the most successful for other participants in the Forbes list. Stock markets were rocked by news of Brexit and the trade war that Donald Trump launched with China. This is largely why there are so many billionaires from Asia in the top ten losers of 2018.

Forbes tells who else ended the year in the red. Calculations are made based on Forbes rating Real-time for the period from December 29, 2017 to December 19, 2018.

1. Mark Zuckerbeg

Lost $18.7 billion, fortune- $52.5 billion

In April 2018, after it became known that Facebook had leaked the data of 50 million users, Mark Zuckerberg lost almost $8 billion in a couple of days. He had to report the leak to Congress, but this did not save the billionaire from problems. In July, Zuckerberg's fortune fell by $15 billion after Facebook failed to meet investor expectations for revenue growth. And in November, The New York Times published an investigation into how Zuckerberg and top managers of the social network paid for negative media publications about George Soros, who criticized Facebook.

2. Amancio Ortega

Lost $16.2 billion, fortune- $59.6 billion

Amancio Ortega is one of the most non-public billionaires from the top ten of the Forbes list. But the financial results of Inditeх, founded by a businessman in 1975, are in plain sight for everyone. The company is one of the largest retailers in the world, its brands include Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti and others. But now she is going through hard times. Due to the slowdown in growth, its shares fell in September 2018 to their worst performance in three years.

3. Georg Scheffler

Lost $14 billion, fortune-$12.9 billion

Almost ten years ago, the holding of Georg Schaeffler and his mother Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler AG absorbed the pearl of German industry - the manufacturer of tires and auto components Continental AG. this year the company reported sales growth of only 1% - the decline in the automobile market in Europe and China played a role. As a result, Continental's capitalization decreased by almost 40% over the year.

4. Ma Huateng

Lost $10.1 billion, fortune- $35.1 billion

The founder of the Internet giant Tencent, Ma Huateng, lost his title as China's richest businessman. In 2018, Tencent shares fell by 25%, largely due to the fact that the Chinese authorities, having decided to combat the development of myopia in children, limited access to online games. However, Huateng ends the year on a positive note. In December, music platform Tencent Music Entertainment listed shares on the New York Stock Exchange for $1.1 billion.

5. Carlos Slim Helu

Lost $9.3 billion, fortune- $56 billion

In 2018, one of the largest telecommunications holdings in the world, America Movil, owned by Carlos Slim El, lost 15% of its value. The Mexican billionaire is no stranger to a drop in the value of his assets, after the Mexican government several years ago began looking to make the country's communications market, which America Movil had dominated for years, more competitive.

6. Jorge Paolo Lehmann

Lost $9.2 billion, fortune- $20 billion

In May 2018, Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paolo Lehmann spoke at a conference and publicly called himself a “scared dinosaur.” "I used to live in clear world old brands and large volumes. We borrowed a little money and bought trademarks and thought that they would be profitable forever. From year to year we simply improved business processes, but then suddenly dramatic changes began,” shared Lehmann. His fears are justified. His beer maker Anheuser-Busch InBev is forced to cut dividends due to falling sales. And food giant Kraft Heinz reported a 33% drop in net income in the third quarter.

7. Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi
Lost $7.24 billion, fortune- $12.8 billion

Thai billionaire Sirivadhanabhakdi, living on the other side of the world from Jorge Paolo Lehmann, faced the same problems in 2018. Due to declining sales, manufacturer's shares alcoholic drinks Thai Beverage fell by 36% over the year.

8. Pollyanna Chu

Lost$7.2 billion, net worth- $2 billion

A year ago, Pollyanna Chu was considered the richest woman in Hong Kong. That all changed in January 2018, when the Hong Kong Securities Commission issued a warning to Chu's Kingston Financial Group, whose assets include hotels and casinos in Macau. 20 people controlled more than 90% of the company's shares - the regulator decided that this threatened its stability. After this, shares of Kingston Financial Group fell by almost 20%. Another blow to quotes came from a 35% decrease in the company’s net profit for the six months of 2018.

9. Wang Wei

Lost $6.7 billion, fortune- $13.1 billion

Chinese entrepreneur Wang Wei once worked as a courier, and now owns more than 60% of the shares of the courier company S.F. Holding, nicknamed the “Chinese Fedex”. Over the year, its shares fell by more than 30% - along with the quotes of many other Chinese companies.

10. Zhou Qunfei

Lost $6.3 billion, fortune-$3.5 billion

Chinese woman Zhou Qunfei made her fortune in the production of smartphone screens. It was her company Lens Technology that Apple ordered the touch display for the first iPhone, released in 2007. Qunfei's decline is a direct consequence of the trade war between the US and China. Lens Technology shares plummeted 64% in a year. And in December, a Chinese court announced a ban on the import and sale of older iPhone models to China.

Jeff Bezos

State:$114 billion

- $46 billion

Bezos founded Internet giant Amazon in 1994, working out of his garage in Seattle. He remains the company's CEO and owns 12% of its shares. The billionaire tops the ranking, despite being the most expensive in history. His wife, MacKenzie, received 19.7 million Amazon shares, about 4% of the company. The entrepreneur himself has 12% left securities. At the time of the official divorce in early July, 4% of Amazon was worth $38.3 billion.

Bill Gates

State:$106 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $9 billion

Bill Gates founded a technology company Microsoft company in 1975 with his partner Paul Allen and remains a member of its board of directors today. The billionaire sold or gave away for free a significant part of his shares in the company - he now owns about 1% of it. Together with his wife Melinda, he created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable foundation, to which, to date, he has donated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft shares. global health and works with Rotary International to fight polio.

Warren Buffett

State:$80.8 billion

Change compared to last year:- $8.5 billion

Warren Buffett combines the positions of CEO, president and chairman of the Berkshire Hathaway investment fund, which owns more than 60 companies. These include battery maker Duracell and insurer Geico. The son of an American congressman bought his first shares when he was 11 years old, and paid taxes for the first time at 13. He promised to give 99% of his fortune to charity. In 2019, Buffett gave $3.6 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2010, together with Gates, he launched the Giving Pledge initiative, under which billionaires are asked to pledge to transfer half of their wealth to charity.

Mark Zuckerberg

State:$69.6 billion

Change compared to last year:+$8.6 billion

Zuckerberg founded Facebook at Harvard in 2004 at age 19 to make it easier for students to get to know each other in class. The company went public in May 2012, and Zuckerberg still owns about 15% of its shares. In December 2015, the entrepreneur and his wife Priscilla Chan promised to donate 99% of their stake in Facebook to charity during their lifetime.

After another wave of criticism against Facebook for disseminating false information and leaking personal data, Zuckerberg said that in 2019 he would focus on solving social problems. In April last year, it became known that Facebook shared user data with the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and the billionaire had to testify before the US Congress

Larry Ellison

State:$65 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $6.6 billion

Larry Ellison founded software manufacturer Oracle in 1977. The billionaire stepped down as its CEO in 2014, but remains head of its board of directors and chief technology officer. In 2016, Oracle, developing the direction of cloud data processing, acquired Netsuite for $9.3 billion.

In May 2016, Ellison donated $200 million to the University of Southern California to create a cancer treatment center. In March last year, he launched a startup called Sensei, the first project of which was the creation of hydroponic farms on Hawaiian island Lanai. Also last year, Ellison joined Tesla's board of directors, purchasing 3 million shares of the company.

Larry Page

State:$55.5 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $1.7 billion

Larry Page's businesses include Alphabet, the parent company of Google, health care research company Calico, and Nest, the household appliances for a smart home. In 1998, Page founded Google with Sergey Brin. Together they invented the Google PageRank algorithm, which powers search engine. Page was Google's first CEO until 2001. He then stepped down but returned in 2011.

Sergey Brin

State:$53.5 billion

Change compared to last year:+$1.1 billion

Sergey Brin is the president of technology giant Alphabet, Google's parent company. Previously, he led the secret division of Google X, which developed augmented reality glasses. He met Google co-founder Larry Page at Stanford University.

Michael Bloomberg

State:$53.4 billion

Change compared to last year:$1.6 billion

Michael Bloomberg founded the information and media company Bloomberg LP in 1981 and now owns 88% of the business, whose revenue is estimated at $10 billion. After graduating from Harvard, he joined Salomon Brothers in 1966.

The entrepreneur has donated $8 billion to fight guns, climate change and other charitable causes. He served as mayor of New York for 12 years, one of only four people to remain in office that long.

Steve Ballmer

State:$51.7 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $9.4 billion

Steve Ballmer led Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He joined the company in 1980 as employee No. 30 after leaving Stanford.

After leaving the company five years ago, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team for $2 billion. Since 2014, he has been involved in charity work, his goal being the fight against poverty among Americans.

Jim Walton

State:$51.6 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $6.4 billion

Jim Walton - youngest son Sam Walton, founder of the retailer Walmart. He runs his family's Arvest Bank, which has assets of more than $19 billion. He ran Walmart for more than a decade before giving way to his son Stuart in June 2016. Jim and Sam Walton's other heirs own about half of the retailer's shares.

Alice Walton

State:$51.4 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $6.5 billion

Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. Unlike her brothers, she did not work in her father's company, but preferred the field of art. In 2011, she opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum features works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Mark Rothko. Alice Walton's personal art collection is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rob Walton

State:$51.3 billion

Change compared to last year:+$6.4 billion

Rob Walton is the eldest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. He and Sam Walton's other heirs together own about half of Walmart's stock.

Charles Koch

State:$41 billion

Change compared to last year:- $12.5 billion

Charles Koch has served as chairman and chief executive officer of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held American company by revenue, since 1967. The company earns $110 billion a year, which comes from various industries from pipe production to cups and carpets.

Julia Koch

State: $41 billion

Change compared to last year: -

Julia Koch and her three children inherited a 42% stake in Koch Industries after David Koch died in August of this year. Together with her husband, Koch donated significant sums to charity, including $10 million to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and $10 million medical center Mount Sinai in New York for allergy research.

In the 1980s, Koch worked as a designer's assistant and, in particular, designed the outfits of US First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Mackenzie Bezos

State:$36.1 billion

Change compared to last year: -

MacKenzie Bezos is the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, to whom she was married for 25 years. They divorced in mid-2019. After the divorce, Mackenzie received 25% of her husband's share in Amazon (4% of the company). Bezos has published two novels and founded the anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution.

State:$35.9 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $2.1 billion

Phil Knight is the founder and majority owner of Nike. He served as chairman of the company for 52 years and left in 2016. Nike now has 73,100 offices in 52 countries. Phil Knight has donated more than $2.7 billion in his life, including $797 million to the University of Oregon and $505 million to Stanford, where he received his degree.

Sheldon Adelson

Net worth: $34.5 billion

Change from last year: - $1 billion

Sheldon Adelson is the CEO and head of the Las Vegas Sands gaming company. He owns more than half of a $14 billion gambling empire with casinos in Las Vegas, Singapore and China. Adelson is currently battling cancer, but he still maintains his leadership responsibilities.

Michael Dell

State:$32.3 billion

Change compared to last year:+$4.7 billion

Dell is the CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Dell Technologies, created after the merger of Dell with the data center company EMC. The merger of the two companies, completed in 2016, was the largest deal in the history of the technology industry. Much of the billionaire's wealth comes from his investment firm, MSD Capital, which owns stakes in hotels and restaurants. In May 2017, Dell donated $1 billion to his own foundation dedicated to fighting child poverty.

John Mars

State:$29.7 billion

Change compared to last year:+ $5.7 billion

Along with his sister Jacqueline and brother Forrest Jr., Mars inherited shares of the candy maker Mars after his father died in 1999. Together with his sister, Mars owns a third of the company. The rest belongs to the daughters of his brother, who died in July 2016. The founder of the company, valued at $35 billion, was the billionaire's grandfather Frank, who created it in 1911.

Jacqueline Mars

State:$29.7 billion

Change compared to last year:+$5.7 billion

Jacqueline Mars, who owns a third of the sweets manufacturer, worked for the company for 20 years and remained on its board of directors until 2016. The board is now chaired by her son, Stephen Badger. Mars is known for her philanthropic work and serves on the boards of six charitable organizations.