Eight billionaires maintain extra wealth than 50% of households in Silicon Valley, almost half 1,000,000 folks, in keeping with a brand new report.
While the wealth hole narrowed by about 3% nationwide in 2021, it grew by 5% within the area, the place tech corporations have helped create a wave of millionaires and billionaires lately, in keeping with the newest Silicon Valley Index.
“We have the highest wealth gap in nation,” mentioned Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, which produces the index. “There are 85 billionaires in Silicon Valley, which is the third-largest concentration in the world behind New York and Hong Kong.”
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It takes simply eight of these billionaires to equal the wealth of the underside half of Silicon Valley’s residents, and the wealth of seven of the eight names comes from tech. They are Google
GOOG,
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, the longtime Google
GOOGL,
chief govt. Also, there’s Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
CEO Jensen Huang, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum and Laurene Powell Jobs, who was married to Apple Inc.
AAPL,
co-founder Steve Jobs. The eighth individual is finance big Charles Schwab, who based Charles Schwab Corp.
SCHW,
The mixed wealth of these eight names — which incorporates money, actual property and investments totaling at the least $10 billion every — is $260 billion, in keeping with knowledge from Forbes as of December 2022 that was analyzed by Rachel Massaro, director of analysis for Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s Institute for Regional Studies.
| Name | Company/Affiliation | Wealth (billions) |
| Larry Page | $75.5 | |
| Sergey Brin | $74.4 | |
| Mark Zuckerberg | Facebook/Meta | $43.8 |
| Eric Schmidt | $15.9 | |
| Jensen Huang | Nvidia | $13.8 |
| Jan Koum | $13.4 | |
| Charles Schwab | Charles Schwab Corp. | $11.9 |
| Laurene Powell Jobs | Apple | $11.1 |
Every 12 months, Joint Venture releases the Silicon Valley Index to point out the temperature of the area by means of numerous knowledge units. This 12 months, the index took a take a look at the area’s wealth inequality with ultra-high-net-worth households included for the primary time.
The index supplies additional proof that the coronavirus pandemic made the wealthy richer. From the report: “Particularly since the start of the Great Recession recovery period in 2010 — and exacerbated by the growth in the wealth divide during the first two years of the pandemic — Silicon Valley’s wealth inequality has grown even more drastic; in 2022, the top 10% of households held 66% of the wealth.”
There had been additionally 22 different Silicon Valley residents, principally from the tech trade, whose complete wealth was estimated at $1 billion to $10 billion, for a mixed complete of $63 billion. They embody enterprise capitalist John Doerr, Intel Corp.
INTC,
co-founder Gordon Moore and actual property magnate John Sobrato.
Other stark illustrations of the rising wealth hole within the area embody:
- Of Silicon Valley’s 163,000 millionaire households (these with greater than $1 million in investable belongings), about 8,300 have greater than $10 million.
- On the opposite hand, about 220,000 Silicon Valley households have lower than $5,000 of their financial institution accounts, Hancock mentioned.
- Nearly one-third, or 28%, of households “did not earn enough money to meet their most basic needs without public or private/informal assistance.”
- Forty-two p.c of children in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties live in households that aren’t self-sufficient, which means they want authorities, church or another sort of help.
- About 2% of Silicon Valley households, or about 22,000, should not have financial institution accounts.
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
