NEW YORK, December 29. /TASS/. The combined net worth of the world’s 500 richest people has surged by $1.5 trillion in 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bloomberg reported that their fortunes were closely correlated to the performance of tech stocks. Tech companies’ owners saw their wealth grow by $658 billion.

Elon Musk topped the list after his Tesla Inc. and SpaceX companies netted $95.4 billion in 2023. As a result, Musk’s wealth is estimated at $232.3 billion, so its net worth is now more than $50 billion above that of the world’s second richest person, Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE.

The news agency said that Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon.com Inc., added more than $70 billion to his wallet, while the fortune of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. (the US corporation that is outlawed as an extremist organization in Russia) grew by more than $80 billion.