this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows.

The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg.

Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, has again proved to be one of biggest winners as the AI gold-rush has pushed US stock markets to record highs.

Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% year-on-year to $645bn. The tycoon, whose business interests include xAI, an artificial intelligence company, became the first person to have a net-worth of more than $500bn in October this year. He could become the world’s first trillionaire if he hits targets set by Tesla, the electric car company he runs.

Musk sits ahead of Google co-founder Larry Page and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the overall rankings of the world’s wealthiest billionaires. Page is estimated to be worth $270bn, and Bezos $255bn.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 57 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Because leveraged debt = “wealth”.

[–] shittydwarf@piefed.social 35 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

They are human centipede-ing the money to keep the bubble inflating.

[–] Ininewcrow@piefed.ca 10 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I hear tulips are a better investment

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 6 points 14 hours ago

At least you could eat the bulbs as famine food.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

popcorn futures as well. and leopard conservation as well.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 2 hours ago

nvidia being the one feeding them food, and the shit is being sent back to them after digestion.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 25 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

Wealth is finite.

They didn't "add" money, no one can.

They redistributed it.

Half a trillion dollars to a handful of billionaires, from everyone else.

Call it what it is.

[–] kn33@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Wealth is finite.

Well, no. Work increases the value of material. Someone will pay more for a calzone than for its ingredients. More value, when distributed, becomes wealth.

That's not what's going on here. The value is all speculative and fake. But wealth is able to be created.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago

Yes and to add to that, wealth is always created by labour, it is only redistributed via ownership.

All investors just give labourers access to resources, it’s needed cause they hoard the resources and keep them scarce so they can leverage them for more.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 2 points 14 hours ago

The whole theory of what constitutes value is somewhere between tautology and handwaving.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Someone will pay more for a calzone than for its ingredients. More value, when distributed, becomes wealth.

Bro...

Do you have a magic pocket that makes money whenever you want a calzone?

Because that's pretty cool.

In the real world no wealth is created. Some was moved from the calzone maker to the store for ingredients, then some other people paid more for a calzone than ingredients cost.

No wealth was created, it was redistributed.

If you spent $2 on ingredients and sold a calzone for $5, somebody just paid you $3 of their own dollars for you to do it.

How the fuck did sonmany people up otw you for just completly missing the point?

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

There is no value added, only an inflated $ value and malprovisioned funds. Everyone is worse off, but the rich who's bank accounts go brrrrr faster than the world enshittifies.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

Yes, we are still trading on the same five acorns that were originally used as currency. /s

Yes, most of the wealth here is stolen, but the statement that wealth is zero-sum is absurdly inaccurate.

[–] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Nah. Wealth isn't finite. It hasn't been for a long time.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

You think more physical representation of money means more wealth?

Like, would you trade a $20 for 5 nickles since it's a 5 for 1 trade?

They print paper money, but that doesn't create more wealth, it makes paper money worth less...

Which is called "inflation" and requires for our exonomy to kind of function...

[–] criscodisco@lemmy.world 22 points 16 hours ago

Straight up robber barons.

[–] Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 13 points 15 hours ago

I feel there's not enough regulation around imaginary money.

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago

THE PLANET OWNS ITSELF MONEY, IN THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, AND YET, WE MAKE MORE? EEAT THE RICH!

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

boom

Yeah, that’s the sound it’s gonna make soon

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 7 points 14 hours ago

The debate used to be:

Should we let rich people exist if they produce great products.

Now the second part isn’t true anymore, but to be fair, those who understand capitalism knew this was always the endgame.

I’m very disappointed this cyberpunk dystopia doesn’t have the cool gadgets to match, at least let me have that.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Who is paying for xAI anything?

[–] Ancalagon@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

.... How is everyone so dense. They sell your information and you are the product. And the best part is they can say they don't because they are not making a profit.

They sell all of your information.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I don't even know who is paying for most of it, to be honest. I know some people that buy an LLM subscription. I know companies will pay for per-seat licenses to things like Copilot.

But I see LLM use in Duckduckgo. I see it jammed into every product we are already paying for at work - MS stuff, Slack, hell, I lost track of all the places where some AI bubble has popped up saying how X product has added AI to help me summarize things. But who is really paying extra for any of that?

And don't get me started on how I can download and run various models via Ollama or the like on even older GPU(s) and get decent performance for a lot of problems, all without handing over a CC# to someone, along with all my data for them to mine.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago

the only way is to sell it to advertisers, or surveillance companies.

[–] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 hours ago

My 87 yr old landlord had looked up some info the other day. I looked over her shoulder and saw she was reading it from DDGs AI bubble, so then had to explain why she shouldn't do that anymore.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Gotta be a giant circlejerk with all that tracking. The same old info being bought and sold over and over again.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago

human centipede combined with ouroburos.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

Somehow I feel like they will be fine when the bottom drops out and ordinary people will be the ones who pay.

[–] not_me@piefed.social 3 points 16 hours ago
[–] SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

Have faith. It will trickle down, any second now.