Thursday, March 10, 2011
Southern California Tech Billionaires Rank On List
Forbes has released its latest list of the world's top billionaires, showing that technology continues to build substantial fortunes in the world. Bill Gates continues to be the wealthiest American on the list at number two, with a fortune of $56B; Larry Ellison was number 5 with $39.5 billion, and Google's Larry Page were number 24 and 25, respectively, with $19.8 billion each. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was ranked 52, with $13.5 billion in net worth. The top local, Southern California billionaire among the technology related fortunes on the Forbes billionaire list was Patrick Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune in biotechnology with Abraxis, ranked number 196 at $5.2 billion. Others include Orange COunty's David Sun and John Tu, who made their fortune from memory maker Kingston Technology, were both ranked number 440 with $2.6 billion in net worth; Jack Dangermond, the founder of Redlands-based mapping software maker ESRI was number 540, with $2.2 billion. Broadcom's Henry Samueli was 595 with a $2 billion fortune, partner Henry Nicholas was 692 with $1.8 billion. Qualcomm's Irwin Jacobs made the list at 782, at $1.6 billion worth of fortune.