<p>Forbes has compiled a list of top 15 tech billionaires. As to be expected all are Americans, except for three. The lone European representation comes from the German software firm SAP. Its co-founder Hasso Plattner started the company with four former IBM colleagues.<br /><br /></p>.<p> In 2012, he was worth $7.2 billion, according to Forbes. From China, comes Robin Li, creator of the search engine Baidu. He started his career as an engineer at Infoseek and was worth $10.2 billion at the last count, which makes him mainland China’s richest person. The third non-American in the list is Azim Premji, who had $15.9 billion in 2012. Wipro may be a mid-size company by global standards. But Premji’s overwhelming ownership of this publicly listed company propels him to the league. <br />Among American tech billionaires, there are no surprises, the usual suspects feature in the list. Bill Gates was worth $61 billion last year. Forbes notes that Microsoft accounts for less than one-fourth of his worth. He has parked rest of his fortune in private equity, bonds and stocks. Microsoft contributes two other billionaires as well. The company’s co-founder Paul Allen was worth $14.2 billion and CEO Steve Ballmer was valued at $15.7 billion. Another company contributes three billionaires in the list: Google. Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were worth $18.7 billion each. Former CEO Eric Schmidt, who was brought to provide ‘adult supervision’ when the company was started by the two graduates stepped down last year with $6.9 billion. The stock market has made Microsoft executives richer and slightly shrunk the worth of Google billionaires.<br /><br />Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell inherited $9 billion after the Apple founder passed away. She first met Jobs in 1989 when he visited Stanford University to give a lecture, where she was studying. The world's largest private software company, SAS’s co-founder James Goodnight is worth $7.3 billion. Michael Dell ($15.9 billion), Jeff Bezos of Amazon ($18.4 billion), Larry Ellison of Oracle ($36 billion) and Mark Zukerberg of Facebook ($17.5 billion) are the other names in the list. <br /></p>
<p>Forbes has compiled a list of top 15 tech billionaires. As to be expected all are Americans, except for three. The lone European representation comes from the German software firm SAP. Its co-founder Hasso Plattner started the company with four former IBM colleagues.<br /><br /></p>.<p> In 2012, he was worth $7.2 billion, according to Forbes. From China, comes Robin Li, creator of the search engine Baidu. He started his career as an engineer at Infoseek and was worth $10.2 billion at the last count, which makes him mainland China’s richest person. The third non-American in the list is Azim Premji, who had $15.9 billion in 2012. Wipro may be a mid-size company by global standards. But Premji’s overwhelming ownership of this publicly listed company propels him to the league. <br />Among American tech billionaires, there are no surprises, the usual suspects feature in the list. Bill Gates was worth $61 billion last year. Forbes notes that Microsoft accounts for less than one-fourth of his worth. He has parked rest of his fortune in private equity, bonds and stocks. Microsoft contributes two other billionaires as well. The company’s co-founder Paul Allen was worth $14.2 billion and CEO Steve Ballmer was valued at $15.7 billion. Another company contributes three billionaires in the list: Google. Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were worth $18.7 billion each. Former CEO Eric Schmidt, who was brought to provide ‘adult supervision’ when the company was started by the two graduates stepped down last year with $6.9 billion. The stock market has made Microsoft executives richer and slightly shrunk the worth of Google billionaires.<br /><br />Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell inherited $9 billion after the Apple founder passed away. She first met Jobs in 1989 when he visited Stanford University to give a lecture, where she was studying. The world's largest private software company, SAS’s co-founder James Goodnight is worth $7.3 billion. Michael Dell ($15.9 billion), Jeff Bezos of Amazon ($18.4 billion), Larry Ellison of Oracle ($36 billion) and Mark Zukerberg of Facebook ($17.5 billion) are the other names in the list. <br /></p>
