Forbes magazine’s annual rankings of the 400 richest people in America have been released, and Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs is number 67 with a net worth of US$3.3 billion.
Microsoft co-founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates is number one with a net worth of $51 billion.
50-year-old Mr. Jobs, a drop-out from Reed College, has most of his wealth tied up in Apple and Pixar stock, with the majority of it from his Pixar holdings. Neither company pays him a CEO-scale salary, although his ability to return Apple to profitability after he returned in 1997 earned him his own corporate jet.
Forbes notes that Apple’s stock is up 130% this past year, thanks to the runaway success of the iPod. Pixar’s film output has grossed $3.2 billion at the worldwide box office over the past decade.
After Mr. Gates, investment guru Warren Buffet is second on the list with $40 billion in holdings, followed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen ($22.5 billion), Michael Dell ($18 billion) and Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($17 billion). Heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune round out the top ten.
Notable tech figures in the rest of the top 400 list include: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (#11; $14 billion); Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (tied for #16 with $11 billion each); eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (#18; $10.2 billion); Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (#42; $4.8 billion); Intel’s Gordon Moore (#44; $4.6 billion); Google’s Eric Schmidt (#52; $4 billion); Star Wars creator George Lucas (#61; $3.5 billion); Yahoo!’s David Filo (#73; $3 billion); and Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang (#93; $2.5 billion).
Moving along, Forbes also lists: Dallas Mavericks owner and Broadcast.com co-founder Mark Cuban (#164; $1.8 billion); eBay CEO Meg Whitman (#207; $1.5 billion); Google’s Kavitark Shriram (#258; $1.3 billion); Siebel Systems founder Thomas Siebel (#258; $1.3 billion); Bose founder Amar Bose (#283; $1.2 billion); Cisco’s John Morgridge (#283; $1.2 billion); Intuit’s Scott Cook (#320; $1.1 billion); PeopleSoft’s David Suffield (#320; $1.1 billion); Motorola’s Robert Galvin (#320; $1.1 billion); Microsoft’s Charles Simonyi (#346; $1 billion); Broadcast.com co-founder Todd Wagner (#346; $1 billion); and AOL founder Stephen Case (#384; $900 million).
1:08 PM, EST: Updated with additional information about Mr. Jobs and the rest of the top 400 list.