The 2023 Tech Entrepreneur Overview: 26 Things You Should Know

In early 2023, Forbes estimated Elon Musk’s net worth at $180 billion.

According to the magazine’s annual billionaires list, Musk ranked second behind the cosmetics and fashion mogul Bernard Arnault. Despite the gains of his other companies like SpaceX and Tesla in 2022, the purchase of Twitter led to a 19.5% drop in Musk’s riches from the peak of $219 billion the year before. But things are looking up for him again — as of mid-August 2023, Forbes put Elon Musk’s real-time worth at $221.2 billion, making him the world’s richest man.

(Forbes)

Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022.

In April 2022, Musk offered to buy a 79% stake in the popular social media platform for $44 billion. By early summer, however, he started rethinking his impending purchase, citing that Twitter had more fake accounts than previously disclosed. Following legal action from Twitter’s owners, Musk delivered on his promise and took control of the platform in late October 2022.

(BBC)

Seven months after Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s value had dropped by 66%.

The famous tech entrepreneur’s Twitter reign has been riddled with controversy from the very beginning. First, he burdened the company with $13 billion in debt, while his erratic leadership style alienated many regular users. Later, he announced that the blue checkmark would only be available to paid subscribers, but only 1% of users decided to pay for it. Finally, he launched a still-ongoing rebranding campaign in July 2023 by changing Twitter’s name to X. All this led to a massive decrease in the company’s value — as of May 2023, Twitter was worth just $15 billion.

(Time Magazine, CBS News)

In July 2023, Musk announced the launch of his new company, xAI.

Although Elon Musk left OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent company, back in 2018, he is still eager to enter the artificial intelligence space. Helped by experts who worked on ChatGPT, he believes xAI, his new startup, will take AI to the next level. In his first public address on this topic, Musk said his upcoming chatbot and other AI tools would value unbiased truth over the perceived political correctness of their main competitors, even if it meant veering into controversial topics.

(CNBC, Decrypt)

Musk’s SpaceX donated $100,000 worth of satellite equipment to Ukraine in 2022.

In times of crisis, what is a tech entrepreneur to do but help? That’s precisely what Musk did when the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022. During the first six months of the conflict, SpaceX donated 20,000 Starlink satellite internet units to help the Ukrainian forces maintain communication. In June 2023, Musk’s good deed was rewarded when the Pentagon announced it would buy more Starlink satellite units for use in Ukraine for an undisclosed sum.

(CNN, CNBC)

As of July 2023, Elon Musk has nine living children.

Often cited as saying that the declining birth rate will cause the end of humanity, Musk has done his fair share to prevent this. So far, he has fathered 10 children with 3 different women. From his marriage to Justine Wilson, he had a son Nevada Smith (died of SIDS in 2002), twins Griffin and Vivian Jenna Wilson, and triplets Saxon, Kai, and Damian. He also has a son named X Æ A-12 and a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl with musician Grimes. With Shivon Zilis, Musk welcomed twins in late 2021, but their sexes and names have never been publicly disclosed.

(Business Insider, People)

According to Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth in early 2023 was $64.4 billion.

Zuckerberg ranked 16th on the magazine’s annual list of the world’s wealthiest people, but his worth took a hit for the second consecutive year. The Meta owner’s 2023 net worth marks a 4.3% drop from $67.3 billion in 2022 and a much steeper 33.6% decline from the 2021 peak of $97 billion. However, owing to the massive success of the newly launched Threads, Zuckerberg is already on the mend — his real-time net worth stood at $100.5 billion as of mid-August 2023.

(Forbes)

Zuckerberg’s Threads is the fastest app ever to reach 100 million users.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur expanded his Meta empire in July 2023 by launching Threads, a social media app designed to compete directly with Twitter. Within just five days, the app’s user base had already crossed the 100-million mark, putting it far ahead of the previous leader ChatGPT, which took two months to reach that milestone. For comparison, Instagram, another social media site owned by Meta, needed two and a half years to attract 100 million users.

(Visual Capitalist)

In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg testified before the US Congress.

After it was revealed that a political consultancy firm had gained access to Facebook’s user data, Zuckerberg was summoned to appear before the US Congress. During his testimony, the tech entrepreneur took responsibility for the incident, which affected 90 million users. But that wasn’t Zuckerberg’s last brush with the US authorities. In October 2021, some senators wanted to question him about the leaked documents pointing to Facebook’s many internal issues and its potentially harmful impact on young users. However, the hearing ultimately didn’t take place.

(The Guardian, USA Today)

Zuckerberg and his wife pledged to invest $3.4 billion in health research in 2021.

Via their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan had previously donated $3 billion to various health research projects. Among other endeavors, this new round of funding was supposed to finance an AI institute at Harvard and the couple’s own CZ Biohub Network. However, leaked documents reveal CZI may be facing financial difficulties, prompting it to lay off 48 employees in August 2023 and cease support for educational policy programs.

(The Scientist, Business Insider)

Mark Zuckerberg has been running 5Ks and half-marathons since 2016.

Back in 2016, Zuckerberg set himself a goal of running 365 miles during that year — a project he dubbed “The Year of Running.” By late April, he had already completed more than 200 miles, having run a half-marathon, a 5K, and another solo 13.1-mile race. Most recently, in April 2023, Zuckerberg ran a 5K as part of Stanford University’s “My Heart Counts” charity event. He set out to complete the run in under 20 minutes and did so, finishing in 19 minutes and 34 seconds.

(Vanity Fair, Runner’s World)

In 2023, Forbes estimated Bill Gates’s net worth at $104.2 billion.

A mainstay on the magazine’s list of the world’s richest people, the Microsoft founder has been in the top 10 since 1995. Currently ranked as the world’s sixth wealthiest person, Gates is likely to add to his riches in 2023. Thanks to having a diverse investment portfolio and owning roughly 1.3% of Mirosoft’s shares, his real-time net worth as of mid-August 2023 stood at $115.2 billion.

(Forbes)

Bill Gates currently owns about 270,000 acres of farmland in the US.

Equating to just 0.03% of all farmland nationwide, this still makes Gates the largest private landowner in the country. Having spent billions buying agricultural properties across 18 states, Gates has become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, most accusing him of wanting to depopulate the planet. But in a 2021 Reddit AMA, Gates put these theories to sleep, saying there was no grand scheme and that his professional team makes all investment decisions.

(The Associated Press, Benzinga)

Since 2020, Bill Gates has invested over $1 billion in global COVID-19 vaccine efforts.

Through their foundation, Gates and his ex-wife Melinda made available $264 million for the development and production of vaccines and $309 for their timely, large-scale delivery. They allocated another $600 million in forgivable loans and guarantees for the manufacturing and purchasing of vaccines for low-income countries. Over the years, the foundation has also pledged billions of dollars to help eradicate other diseases, including HIV, polio, and malaria.

(Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Reuters)

In February 2022, Bill Gates bought a 3.76% stake in Heineken.

Though he once said he wasn’t particularly keen on drinking beer, Gates paid $939.87 million for 10.83 million shares of the Dutch brewing giant. He personally bought 6.65 million, while the other 4.18 million shares were purchased through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which already has a stake in a few other Dutch companies. All the shares previously belonged to FEMSA, a Mexican beverage company, which was one of Heineken’s largest shareholders.

(Reuters, Fortune)

Bill Gates’s house in Medina, Washington, was last valued at $131 million.

Dubbed Xanadu 2.0, the 66,000-square-foot home previously owned by Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda has 7 bedrooms, 6 kitchens, and 24 bathrooms — 10 of them full baths. In addition, there’s a reception hall that accommodates up to 200 people, a home theater with 20 seats, and garages that fit a total of 23 cars. Xanadu 2.0 also has a 2,500-square-foot exercise area, a 2,100-square-foot library, a 1,900-square-foot guest house, and a 60-square-foot pool.

(People, Business Insider)

According to Forbes, Changpeng Zhao’s net worth in early 2023 was $10.2 billion.

Although he only ranks as the 167th wealthiest person on the planet, Zhao is among the most affluent and influential crypto entrepreneurs. Forbes’s estimation appears to be somewhat low, though. As of mid-August 2023, the business site Bloomberg put the Binance owner’s worth at a much higher $27.3 billion. However, Bloomberg’s analysts note that Zhao’s holdings aren’t particularly stable, as all his fortune is derived from the volatile world of cryptocurrency trading.

(Forbes, Bloomberg)

Changpeng Zhao played a crucial role in the November 2022 collapse of FTX.

CZ, as he is known in the crypto world, tweeted in early November that he would sell all his FTT tokens, which were worth $580 million at the time. The tokens were proprietary to FTX, a major crypto exchange and Binance’s key competitor, owned by the then-crypto world’s poster boy, Sam Bankman-Fried. This announcement sent FTX investors into panic mode and ultimately led to the company’s unexpected demise over the next few days. In January 2023, Bankman-Fried said CZ’s tweet was part of a targeted attack aimed at destroying FTX and its sister companies.

(Forbes, Business Insider)

Since 2022, Zhao’s Binance has been the subject of a DOJ investigation.

The US Department of Justice is investigating Binance for allegedly attempting to deceive US regulators and engaging in money laundering. In July 2023, several senior executives resigned from the company, unhappy with Changpeng Zhao’s leadership style and his response to the investigation. Along with the ongoing DOJ inquiry, the company was also sued by the SEC in June 2023. That lawsuit charges Zhao for running a “web of deception” and committing a series of illegal activities, including diverting customer funds and artificially inflating trading volumes.

(Fortune, Reuters)

Changpeng Zhao put $500 million into Elon Musk’s Twitter bid in 2022.

In an October 2022 interview, Zhao said his company had invested half a billion dollars to help Musk’s Twitter takeover and ensure crypto plays a large part in the platform’s future. According to CZ, Binance was creating an internal team that would use blockchain to help remove all bot accounts on the site. Though Zhao has since unfollowed Musk on Twitter, now rebranded as X, he again urged the serial tech entrepreneur to address the platform’s bot issue in August 2023.

(Decrypt)

In 2021, Zhao said he planned to donate up to 99% of his wealth to charity.

Like other entrepreneurs before him, CZ said he planned to donate between 90% and 99% of his wealth to charitable causes in his lifetime. Although media reports on Binance’s CEO rarely focus on that, Zhao is no stranger to philanthropy. In 2019, he established Binance Charity, the world’s first decentralized charity foundation. During its first year, the foundation raised over $8 million to secure daily meals and medication for students in need, provide reusable sanitary pads to young girls in Africa, and support COVID-19 relief efforts in the hardest-hit countries.

(Forbes)

Forbes put the Winklevoss twins’ cumulative net worth at $2.4 billion in early 2023.

The twins Cameron and Tyler both have the same investment portfolios, so they’re each worth $1.2 billion. This is relatively small compared to other entrepreneurs, putting them outside the top 2000 on the magazine’s annual list of the world’s wealthiest people. But again, Forbes may have been conservative in its estimate because the twins derive most of their riches from their various crypto endeavors. To that point, in a May 2023 article, Bloomberg estimated their worth at a much healthier $6.4 billion, with Tyler and Cameron each having a net worth of $3.2 billion.

(Forbes, Bloomberg)

The Winklevoss twins sued Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, saying Facebook was their idea.

Following a prolonged court battle, the twins ultimately settled with Zuckerberg in 2011. As part of the settlement deal reached in 2008 and upheld in court three years later, the twins got $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock, equating to 1.2 million shares. But thanks to the company’s five-for-one stock split initiative in 2010, they were soon sitting on 6 million shares. With the Facebook saga behind them, the twins moved on to the crypto world. After all, when one door closes, what is a tech entrepreneur to do but find other endeavors to invest in?

(Reuters)

Besides other digital assets, the twins currently own around 70,000 bitcoins.

In a 2013 interview, the twins said they had purchased $11 million worth of bitcoin at the time when one bitcoin was going for $120. Ten years later, Forbes estimated that they jointly owned 70,000 bitcoins, equating to $1.8 billion as of late August 2023. Despite the big crypto crash of 2022, the Winklevoss twins are still firm bitcoin believers. In a recent interview, they described it as this decade’s best investment opportunity and predicted its worth would reach $500,000 by 2028. According to the twins, this could help bitcoin disrupt gold and become a store of value.

(The National)

The twins lost $900 million of customer funds in the collapse of brokerage firm Genesis.

Gemini Earn, an offshoot of the twins’ Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, was a program that allowed users to lend their assets to the brokerage firm Genesis and earn a percentage of the value back in interest rates. But when Genesis went under in January 2023, 340,000 investors lost access to the $900 million held by the firm. This happened merely days after the SEC sued both companies for trading unregistered securities; that process is still pending. Meanwhile, in July 2023, the twins sued the brokerage firm’s owner DCG and its CEO Barry Silbert for fraud.

(Financial Times)

The Winklevosses’ Gemini has had three rounds of layoffs since June 2022.

Following the January 2023 debacle of the Earn program, Gemini announced it would cut its staff by 10%. Seeing as it had 1,000 employees in November 2022, this meant 100 people would lose their jobs. Like all other major crypto firms, Gemini wasn’t immune to the effects of the 2022 “crypto winter.” In 2022, the company had two rounds of layoffs — it first reduced its headcount by 7% in June 2022, proceeding to let go another 10% of its staff a month later.

(CNBC)