A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows.
The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg.
Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, has again proved to be one of biggest winners as the AI gold-rush has pushed US stock markets to record highs.
Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% year-on-year to $645bn. The tycoon, whose business interests include xAI, an artificial intelligence company, became the first person to have a net-worth of more than $500bn in October this year. He could become the world’s first trillionaire if he hits targets set by Tesla, the electric car company he runs.
Musk sits ahead of Google co-founder Larry Page and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the overall rankings of the world’s wealthiest billionaires. Page is estimated to be worth $270bn, and Bezos $255bn.
Wealth is finite.
They didn’t “add” money, no one can.
They redistributed it.
Half a trillion dollars to a handful of billionaires, from everyone else.
Call it what it is.
Well, no. Work increases the value of material. Someone will pay more for a calzone than for its ingredients. More value, when distributed, becomes wealth.
That’s not what’s going on here. The value is all speculative and fake. But wealth is able to be created.
Yes and to add to that, wealth is always created by labour, it is only redistributed via ownership.
All investors just give labourers access to resources, it’s needed cause they hoard the resources and keep them scarce so they can leverage them for more.
The whole theory of what constitutes value is somewhere between tautology and handwaving.
Bro…
Do you have a magic pocket that makes money whenever you want a calzone?
Because that’s pretty cool.
In the real world no wealth is created. Some was moved from the calzone maker to the store for ingredients, then some other people paid more for a calzone than ingredients cost.
No wealth was created, it was redistributed.
If you spent $2 on ingredients and sold a calzone for $5, somebody just paid you $3 of their own dollars for you to do it.
How the fuck did sonmany people up otw you for just completly missing the point?
Yes, we are still trading on the same five acorns that were originally used as currency. /s
Yes, most of the wealth here is stolen, but the statement that wealth is zero-sum is absurdly inaccurate.
There is no value added, only an inflated $ value and malprovisioned funds. Everyone is worse off, but the rich who’s bank accounts go brrrrr faster than the world enshittifies.
Nah. Wealth isn’t finite. It hasn’t been for a long time.
You think more physical representation of money means more wealth?
Like, would you trade a $20 for 5 nickles since it’s a 5 for 1 trade?
They print paper money, but that doesn’t create more wealth, it makes paper money worth less…
Which is called “inflation” and requires for our exonomy to kind of function…
That’s not how wealth works. Wealth is not a representation of money, but money is a representation of wealth. Printing money doesn’t create wealth, it just makes the representation of wealth worth less. The implication that wealth has to be “taken away” from something or someone is just straightup wrong because that would imply the world has not gained any wealth ever, which would be a stupid assumption. Wealth is created by work and innovation - that’s why the materials inside a smartphone are worth significantly less than the entire smartphone.