9 tech titans took a $150 billion wealth hit during Thursday's AI stock plunge — with Elon Musk alone losing $80 billion

• The nine richest tech tycoons lost over $150 billion in wealth during Thursday’s sell-off.
• Elon Musk’s net worth shrank by over $80 billion as Tesla and SpaceX shares tanked.
• Michael Dell, Jensen Huang, and Larry Ellison saw their fortunes decline by over $10 billion each.

Thursday was a bad day to be a tech boss.

The Nasdaq 100 plunged into a correction, posting a more than 6% drop and its worst day since the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors sold off tech stocks in anticipation of Democrats reining in AI and data-center spending after winning control of the House and Senate in the US midterm elections this week.

Elon Musk took the biggest hit to his net worth as Tesla stock tanked 11% and SpaceX stock tumbled 9% on the day. The richest man on the planet saw his wealth shrink by about $80 billion, or over 9%, to $785 billion.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took a 3% hit, or roughly $6 billion, trimming his net worth to $188 billion, as Microsoft stock slumped by about 4%.

Taken together, these nine tech leaders saw $152 billion erased from their collective wealth in a single day. But it’s worth underscoring that they all ranked among the 15 richest people on Earth at Thursday’s market close, and many remained wealthier than 12 months prior, thanks to a historic boom in AI stocks.

Musk was still up $312 billion. Bezos was up $100 billion, Dell was up $31 billion, and Ballmer was up $13 billion.

However, Ellison’s net worth was down by $152 billion or 49%, and Huang was down about $19 billion or 11%. Zuckerberg was also in the red for the past 12 months, while Page and Brin were up less than 1%.

Read the original article on Business Insider