This Is How Much These 10 Billionaires Made in 2020

2020 was a great year for billionaires. While low-income workers in areas like restaurants, travel and hospitality, and entertainment saw layoffs and paychecks get slashed during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans largely thrived. Thanks to a recovery in the stock market, a surge in tech stocks, and booming home prices, the richest Americans got richer in a bifurcation that’s been called a “K-shaped recovery.”

Billionaires, such as those at the helm of some of the country’s biggest companies, were also big winners. Let’s take a look at how much 10 of the best-known billionaires made last year. (Net worth gains are estimated.)

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Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was one of the biggest winners during the coronavirus pandemic as the company’s strengths in areas like e-commerce, cloud computing, and video streaming made it well suited for the demand changes during the crisis.

Amazon stock rose 76% last year, adding about $700 billion to the company’s market value to bring it above $1.6 trillion.

Not surprisingly, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who was already the richest person in the world at the beginning of the year, also saw his net worth surge in 2020.

Bezos began 2020 with $108 billion in Amazon stock, sold about 4 million shares, and finished the year with $173 billion in Amazon shares. Including the proceeds from the stock sales, Bezos’ net worth from Amazon was approximately $183 billion. Including all of his assets such as The Washington Post, space exploration company Blue Origin, and various real estate holdings, his net worth was estimated at $203 billion in October.

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Perhaps nobody had a better 2020 than Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) CEO and visionary Elon Musk. Tesla stock went on a tear last year, skyrocketing 743% as investors began to believe that electric cars would go mainstream, making Tesla, the leader in EVs, the most valuable automaker in the world by multiples.

Musk, who initially became a billionaire as a founder of PayPal, saw his stake in Tesla go from $14 billion at the start of the year to $120 billion. Musk is also the founder of SpaceX, the space exploration company most recently valued at $46 billion this summer, and which Morgan Stanley recently forecast would reach a valuation of $100 billion.

Musk’s net worth is now estimated at $160 billion following the surge in Tesla and SpaceX valuations, and he could become the richest person in the world if Tesla stock keeps gaining.

While Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) didn’t see the same level of gains that Amazon or Tesla experienced last year, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg still padded his net worth nicely. Facebook shares rose 33% in 2020, enough to outpace the S&P 500’s gains at 16%.

Zuckerberg began the year with 400 million shares in Facebook, worth $82 billion at the time, and the value of that stake rose to $109 billion by the end of the year. Since Zuckerberg founded the social media giant in college, the vast majority of his wealth is tied to his Facebook shares, where he maintains majority voting control. Facebook is now worth about $800 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) CEO and founder Warren Buffett has long been one of the richest people in the world as Berkshire has been one of the fastest-growing stocks since its founding in 1965.

The conglomerate struggled in 2020, however, despite a pullback that would have seemed to be an ideal opportunity for Berkshire, which is flush with cash so Buffett can make timely acquisitions. Berkshire finished the year up just 2.4%, significantly trailing the S&P 500, but those gains were still enough to add to Buffett’s net worth.

The Oracle of Omaha came into 2020 holding about $88 billion worth of Berkshire shares. With the gains in the stock, that stake rose to $90 billion.

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Arguably, no company caught fire last year as much as Zoom Video Communications (Nasdaq: ZM). The videoconferencing tool went from being a niche business product to an essential utility for companies, schools, families, and friends to stay connected during the coronavirus crisis. That boom led to tremendous growth for the company, with revenue up more than 300% in the last two quarters. Not surprisingly, the stock has soared as well, jumping nearly 400%.

Alongside investors, founder and CEO Eric Yuan has been a big winner. His stake in Zoom was valued at $3.2 billion at the beginning of 2020 with the stock trading at just $68 a share, but it soared to $15.8 billion at the end of the year. At one point, Yuan’s holdings were worth more than $25 billion, but the stock cooled off toward the end of the year as investors looked ahead to the vaccine rollout and the end of the pandemic.

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Like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey helms two companies at once, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) and Square (NYSE: SQ), dividing his time equally between the two.

Both stocks surged during the pandemic, with Twitter gaining 69% and Square soaring 248% last year. Square is now worth more than double Twitter’s valuation, finishing 2020 at a market cap of $98 billion compared with $43 billion for Twitter.

At the beginning of the year, Dorsey’s stake in Square was worth $3.7 billion. He sold more than 8 million shares in Square during the year after pledging to give away $1 billion in his Square holdings to help with COVID-19 relief; he finished the year with nearly 51 million shares, valued at $11.1 billion. His holdings in Twitter are much smaller as he only owns about 2% of that company compared with 13% of Square, and even after last year’s gains, the Twitter stake is worth less than $1 billion.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), the world’s biggest e-commerce company, has gone through the wringer in the last couple months. After Ma publicly mocked Chinese financial regulators, the Chinese Communist Party responded by blocking the IPO of Ant Group, the Alibaba financial subsidiary, which was set to be the biggest IPO in history.

Then, Chinese regulators followed that up with an antitrust investigation into Alibaba on Dec. 24, and in early January, Ma was even reported “missing,” though it appears he’s just lying low to avoid further scrutiny.

Despite a slide at the end of the year, on the above concerns, Alibaba stock still finished up 10%, and according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ma’s net worth rose from $46.6 billion at the end of 2019 to $50.6 billion at the end of 2020.

ALSO READ: How Risky Is Jack Ma's Alibaba Today?

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) founder Bill Gates was at one point the wealthiest person in the world as the tech giant was the most valuable company in the country during the dot-com boom, and even more recently under CEO Satya Nadella, thanks to its fast-growing cloud business and continuing strength in the enterprise tech industry.

Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2008 and has since devoted his attention to his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Today, he owns about 1% of Microsoft after selling or donating much of his shares, but that still represents about $17 billion after the stock rose 41% last year. The rest of his net worth is divided among other assets.

According to Bloomberg, his net worth increased last year from $113 billion at the end of 2019 to $131 billion.

Phil Knight, the co-founder and former CEO of Nike (NYSE: NKE), has retired from running the company, stepping down as CEO in 2006 and then as chairman in 2016. But his net worth continues to grow thanks to his formidable stake in the sportswear giant.

Knight owns about 35 million shares of Nike in his own name, and his family owns another 230 million through a holding company called Swoosh.

Nike was a surprise winner on the stock market last year as its investment in digital and direct-to-consumer helped it buck the broader trend in apparel and make significant market-share gains. The stock finished the year up 40%, pushing its market cap up to $222 billion.

For Knight, that meant his stake grew from $26.8 billion to $37.4 billion by the end of 2020.

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) co-founder, former CEO, and current Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison also saw his net worth rise in 2020, but not as much as some other tech titans did.

As a legacy tech company, the software and cloud-computing company has lagged some of the younger tech giants, but the stock still gained 22% last year.

Ellison holds 1.18 billion shares in Oracle, giving him approximately one-third ownership of the company. Last year, the value of that stake rose from $62.5 billion to $76.3 billion.

Ellison also invested $1 billion in Tesla in 2019, making him the second-biggest individual shareholder in the electric-car leader behind Elon Musk. After 2020’s rally, that stake is worth about $10 billion.

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We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Amazon or Netflix when they were first recommended by the Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!” And it’s true. And while Amazon and Netflix have had a good run, we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $49 a share! Simply click here to learn how to get your copy of “5 Growth Stocks Under $49” for FREE for a limited time only.

Investors should remember that 2020 was an anomaly. A number of tech stocks saw enormous returns thanks to the impact of the pandemic, but that performance is unlikely to repeat itself this year. If anything, there could be a correction as many of these stocks have grown faster than their underlying fundamentals, and consumer habits are likely to swing back to prepandemic ways as vaccines are distributed and the crisis comes to an end.

Still, 2021 is bound to hold some mysteries as the recovery from the pandemic is still unclear, and political tensions are mounting again ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Investors can also expect loose monetary policy and low interest rates to encourage stocks to move higher, meaning the billionaires on the list above are likely to see their net worths continue to expand.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Teresa Kersten, an employee of LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jeremy Bowman owns shares of Amazon, Facebook, Nike, and Zoom Video Communications. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway (B shares), Facebook, Microsoft, Nike, PayPal Holdings, Square, Tesla, Twitter, and Zoom Video Communications and recommends the following options: long January 2022 $1920 calls on Amazon, short January 2021 $200 puts on Berkshire Hathaway (B shares), short January 2022 $1940 calls on Amazon, long January 2021 $200 calls on Berkshire Hathaway (B shares), and long January 2022 $75 calls on PayPal Holdings. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.