Elon Musk, the richest on Earth, not the top earner of 2024
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It is not the richest multi-billionaire in history, and Elon Musk is not the top earner of the year 2024, but an Asian. Owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk, is way behind the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, in earnings this year after he earned around $55.9 billion more in 2024 than in 2023, while Musk earned only $15 billion.
In 2023, Huang's earnings were $21.1 billion, which skyrocketed $77 billion in 2024.
The earnings in 2024 took Huang's net worth to $123.8 billion, and he reached ninth on Forbes Real-Time Billionaire List. Remaining top in the list, Musk's net worth reached $334.3 billion.
Huang was born in Taiwan and grew up in the US from the age of nine. He is an alumnus of Oregon State University and Stanford University, where he specialized in electrical engineering. He has been the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia since 1993 and was behind the company's rise as a leader in AI technology.
This year, Nvidia's shares soared to record levels, pushing Huang's fortune. He has a 3.5 per cent equity stake in the $3.5 trillion company, which accounts for nearly all of his wealth. Earlier this year, 713 million worth of Nvidia stock was sold, but he remains the company's largest stakeholder.
In the market share in AI accelerators, Nvidia holds 80 per cent and provides cutting-edge AI applications used by tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and even Musk's Tesla. Also, Nvidia's graphic processing units (GPUs), which were popular in gaming, became essential for AI models like OpenAI and ChatGPT. Forbes reported that the demand for Nvidia's products is intense, and customers are reportedly becoming "really emotional".