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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →No—not literally. In Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, the roughly 100 technology fortunes among the 500 richest people gained a combined $845 billion through September 30, 2026, while fortunes from outside technology in that same ranking lost $62 billion collectively. Those are sector totals for a selected ranking, not proof that every non-tech billionaire lost wealth or that every billionaire worldwide is poorer.
What Bloomberg’s 2026 figures show
Bloomberg’s comparison covers the people in its Billionaires Index, a ranking of 500 of the world’s richest people. Through September 30, the index attributed a record first-nine-month gain of $845 billion to its technology fortunes. Over the same period, non-technology fortunes in the index lost $62 billion as a group. [Irish Examiner, October 5, 2026]
The headline’s “only” is therefore shorthand for the contrast between two aggregate totals. It does not mean that every technology billionaire gained money, or that every billionaire in another industry lost it. Nor does the index cover every billionaire in the world.
How much are tech fortunes worth?
At the September 30 cutoff, Bloomberg estimated the combined wealth of the index’s technology billionaires at $4.6 trillion—36% of the index’s total wealth, despite technology fortunes representing about one-fifth of its members. Bloomberg linked the gains to the AI boom and rising technology stocks, particularly in the United States. [Irish Examiner, October 5, 2026]
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Some individual fortunes rose substantially in Bloomberg’s estimates: Elon Musk added $310 billion through September, Michael Dell’s estimated wealth increased 81% to $254 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg added $23 billion. These figures describe estimated changes in net worth, not salaries, cash received, or profits realized by selling investments. [Irish Examiner, October 5, 2026]
These are estimates of wealth, not cash earnings
Bloomberg describes its Billionaires Index as a daily ranking of the world’s richest people. Its estimates change with markets and the economy and draw on Bloomberg reporting; the index says individual profiles explain how fortunes are tallied. That makes the figures dated estimates of net worth, not audited accounts of cash income. [Bloomberg Billionaires Index]
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A person can become wealthier on paper when shares or other assets rise in value without selling them or receiving that increase as cash. The reverse is also true: a falling estimated fortune does not necessarily mean the person spent or lost that amount of cash.
Tech gains were large, but the year was not a straight climb
The gains occurred amid volatility. The combined wealth of the 500 people in Bloomberg’s ranking peaked at $13.4 trillion in mid-June, then fell 6% to $12.6 trillion amid a broader market slowdown and concerns about some major AI companies. The September 30 sector comparison is a snapshot through that date, not a guarantee that the same totals hold after it; Bloomberg updates the index daily. [Irish Examiner, October 5, 2026] [Bloomberg Billionaires Index]
How this compares with earlier billionaire data
Technology wealth had also grown strongly in UBS’s separate 2025 report, but its figures use a different database and measurement period. UBS reported that technology billionaire assets rose 23.8%, or $583.5 billion, to $3.0 trillion. It also reported a 27.1% rise in industrial billionaire wealth, to $1.7 trillion—an example of gains outside technology in that separate dataset and period. These UBS figures should not be treated as a like-for-like comparison with Bloomberg’s 2026 top-500 totals. [UBS, Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025]
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