India’s richest man surged past Silicon Valley tech titan Elon Musk as well as Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to become the world’s sixth-richest person.
Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries, whose wealth surpassed Warren Buffett’s last week, is now worth US$72.4-billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Shares of the conglomerate have more than doubled from a low in March as its digital unit got billions in investments from companies including Facebook, Silver Lake and, most recently, Qualcomm.
Ambani’s energy empire is slowly shifting to e-commerce, with tech giants seeking to take a piece of India’s fast-growing digital business. The world’s second most populous nation has seen a spike of foreign interest in its economy, especially from Silicon Valley, and Google said on Monday it would spend $10-billion in the coming years to help accelerate the adoption of digital technologies in the country.
After a drop in US tech shares on Monday, Page’s fortune now stands at $71.6-billion, while Brin’s is at $69.4-billion and Tesla’s Musk is worth $68.6-billion. Buffett’s net worth dropped last week after he gave away $2.9-billion to charity. — Reported by Blake Schmidt, (c) 2020 Bloomberg LP