
<p><strong>TOPLINE</strong>: Shares of Airbnb have plunged 25% since their monster trading debut on Thursday, and analysts forecast the stock could slump further as recently priced initial public offerings flash warning signs in the market.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



<p>After a bearish analyst call on Monday, shares of Airbnb are falling 5% today pushing shares down to about $124 apiece, or 25% lower than their trading day high of $165.</p>



<p>The fortunes of the firm&#8217;s three cofounders–Nathan Blecharcyzk, Joe Gebbia and CEO Brian Chesky–have plunged nearly $5 billion combined since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/12/10/thanks-to-ipo-pop-airbnbs-three-billionaire-cofounders-more-than-double-their-net-worths-in-a-single-day/">Thursday&#8217;s close</a>&nbsp;to about $8.5 billion for each of Blecharcyzk and Gebbia and $9.5 billion for Chesky.</p>



<p>In a note downgrading Airbnb&#8217;s stock on Monday, Gordon Haskett analyst Robert Mollins said Airbnb&#8217;s IPO surge &#8220;more than stretched&#8221; the firm&#8217;s share prices, which have lifted Airbnb&#8217;s valuation to roughly two-times estimated bookings in 2022.</p>



<p>At that rate, Airbnb&#8217;s valuation, relative to its revenue potential, is more than three times higher than the average among competing online travel agencies like Expedia and Booking.com, Mollins further noted.</p>



<p>He downgraded the firm to underperform from a pre-IPO buy rating, but upped his price target to $103 from $77.</p>



<p>Wall Street&#8217;s still generally bearish on Airbnb&#8217;s current price levels: three analysts covering the stock give an average one-year price target of about $96, representing nearly 25% downside to current prices.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h4>



<p>“An overwhelming majority of investors we’ve spoken with have been unable to justify Airbnb’s valuation premium relative to [other online travel firms] and expressed interest in realizing their quick gains,” Mollins wrote in a note to clients on Monday. “Investors&#8230;&nbsp; like Airbnb’s business model and want to be long-term holders, but are now looking at selling the stock because they no longer feel comfortable owning it.”</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



<p>Shares of Airbnb skyrocketed as much as 120% during the home rental giant&#8217;s long-awaited first day of trading, propelling the firm&#8217;s market cap to more than five times its last private market valuation of $18 billion in April. Despite the damper the pandemic is putting on the travel industry, Airbnb shares were priced at a higher than expected $68 on Wednesday, allowing the firm to raise roughly $3.5 billion in its initial public offering. That bested the $3.4 billion DoorDash raised just one day earlier to make Airbnb&#8217;s public market debut the third-largest of 2020. DoorDash shares have tanked nearly 20% since Wednesday.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h4>



<p>$103 billion.That&#8217;s how high Airbnb&#8217;s market capitalization got on Thursday–higher than all publicly traded U.S. hotel chains combined. It&#8217;s now at about $73 billion.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h4>



<p>On Saturday, fintech startup Affirm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/affirm-postpones-initial-public-offering-sources-say-11607801619" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pushed</a>&nbsp;its IPO back to January at the earliest, as people familiar with the matter cited hesitancy around the &#8220;extreme&#8221; first-day pops of Airbnb and Doordash as well as delays sparked by an influx of listing requests at the Securities and Exchange Commission. That echoed concerns from gaming company Roblox just one day earlier, when the firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/roblox-delays-ipo-until-next-year-11607742940?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told employees</a>&nbsp;that its planned December IPO would instead happen early next year given the uncertainty around recent IPO valuations.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/12/10/thanks-to-ipo-pop-airbnbs-three-billionaire-cofounders-more-than-double-their-net-worths-in-a-single-day/">Thanks To IPO Pop, Airbnb’s Three Billionaire Cofounders More Than Double Their Net Worths In A Single Day</a>&nbsp;<em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/12/10/airbnb-ipo-shares-valuation-billion-more-than-marriott-hilton-hyatt/">Airbnb Skyrockets 120% In IPO, Valuation Blows Past $100 Billion–More Than Marriott, Hilton And Hyatt Combined</a>&nbsp;<em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/12/09/doordash-ipo-shares-first-day-of-trading/">DoorDash IPO: Shares Surge 80% At Start Of Trading, Boosting Valuation To $60 Billion In Year’s Third-Largest IPO</a>&nbsp;<em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><a href="https://qz.com/1945769/is-there-a-bubble-in-us-tech-stocks-and-will-it-pop-in-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Is a massive bubble in US tech stocks coming—or is it already here?</a> <em>(Quartz)</em></p>



<p>&#8211;<em>By Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Airbnb Open LA – “Introducing Trips” Reveal

Airbnb Stock Down 25% Since IPO, Three Billionaire Cofounders Lose $5 Billion In 3 Trading Days


<p class="has-drop-cap">Electric car billionaire William Li, the so-called Elon Musk of China, entered 2020 in a terrible predicament. His publicly-traded electric vehicle concern, Nio, had consumed some $6 billion-plus in funding and was in a cash crunch so dire it warned investors of “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”</p>



<p>By February, Nio’s shares, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, traded as low as $3, valuing the company at less than its total cash raised. Dizzying losses meant Li’s electric car dream was proving harder than expected to realize, and then came Covid-19. With Nio’s stock limping along, down 80% from its first day of trading, Li turned to governments around the world for bailout cash.</p>



<p>On April 10, the company’s wholly-owned California-based operation, Nio Inc. USA, applied for and was granted a $5.4 million loan as part of the Cares Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), via its lender East West Bank. The cash was used to save 204 jobs, according to its application, and was part of a series of bailouts that helped save Nio and eventually turn its founder Li into a billionaire many times over. In April and May, Nio also raised over $1 billion in new cash from the Hefei and Anhui municipalities in China via manufacturing and investment partnerships.</p>



<p>Since its bailouts, Nio has transformed from a desperate electric vehicle concern into a stock market darling, fueled by a speculative investment mania not seen since the dot-com-era. It’s shares now trade at over $46, or a $60 billion-plus market capitalization. With its soaring valuation, Nio has raised more than $2 billion in new cash by selling stock, some of it used to redeem investments made by Chinese municipalities, according to prospectuses.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/william-li/?sh=74ba8b3911a1">Forbes values Li’s net worth at $7 billion</a>, almost entirely based on Nio’s skyrocketing stock.</p>



<p>Despite its success, Nio plans to keep its PPP bailout money, which was intended to keep struggling small businesses in the U.S. afloat. The millions of U.S. bailout cash the company was granted sits in its U.S. banks account and will be used for expenses. Says a Nio spokesperson in an email to&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>, “NIO’s research and development center that is part of NIO, Inc. and based in San Jose, California, applied for the program and received a loan of $5.4m on April 13, 2020. The maturity date is 2 years after April 13, 2020 (i.e. April 13, 2022) with an annual interest of 1%. The entire amount has been kept in NIO’s US bank account and used for US payroll, rental expenses, and utility bills.”</p>



<p>Nio is far from alone among well-funded electric vehicle and self-driving car startups that took taxpayer cash. EV and self-driving car startups now worth $75 billion on public and private markets took over $50 million in PPP cash, according to&nbsp;<em>Forbes’</em>&nbsp;research. Many, like Nio, have decided to keep the cash even as their fortunes soar and their founders become billionaires. Included in this group are a number of EV startups that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2020/11/19/the-looming-spac-meltdown/?sh=d02d47770d7e">have cashed in on the speculative Spac boom this year to go public</a>.</p>



<p>Soaring EV and autonomous driving Spac concerns such as Hyliion, Luminar Technologies, Nikola Motor, Canoo, Velodyne Lidar and Lordstown Motors all took millions in PPP money. While Hyliion and Luminar have since completed their Spac IPOs and returned their $10.1 million and $7.8 million PPP loans, respectively, filings indicate Canoo and Velodyne Lidar have not returned their bailout money.</p>



<p>Electric mini-bus startup Canoo, which has raised over $1 billion in funding according to PitchBook data, was valued at $1.8 billion in a merger with a Spac named Hennessy Capital Acquisition IV, which raised $600 million in investor cash. Since the Spac merger was agreed in August, Canoo has seen its implied valuation surpass $3 billion based on a heavy speculative buying. Regardless, the company recently told investors it expects to see its $7 million PPP loan forgiven by taxpayers.</p>



<p>Says Canoo in a Dec. 4 filing. “During October 2020, Canoo submitted its application for forgiveness of the PPP Loan.&nbsp;Canoo has and intends to continue to use the PPP loan proceeds for purposes consistent with the provisions of the PPP and believes that such usage will meet the criteria established for forgiveness of the loan.” (A spokesperson didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.)</p>



<p>Velodyne Lidar, a startup selling self-driving car technologies, took $10 million in PPP cash. As a private startup, it raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. Then, in July, it struck a merger with a Spac called Graf Industrial at a $1.8 billion valuation, raising about $400 million in new investor cash. Since the summer, Velodyne Lidar’s stock has doubled to a $3.5 billion valuation. At current prices, founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-hall/?sh=7a1eb7dd6249">David S. Hall’s beneficial ownership of 59 million shares are worth over $1 billion</a>.</p>



<p>According to its financial disclosures, as of Sept. 30, the PPP loan was still sitting in company coffers. Says Velodyne in a Nov. 9 filing, “The principal and accrued interest are forgivable after 24 weeks as long as the borrower uses the loan proceeds for eligible purposes, including payroll, benefits, rent and utilities, and maintains its payroll levels and that approval is received from the relevant government entity. The unforgiven portion of the PPP Loan is payable in two years at an interest rate of 1% per annum, with a deferral of interest payments for the first six months.” (Velodyne didn’t respond to an email seeking comment).</p>



<p>Electric bus startup Proterra is one of the most well-funded Silicon Valley EV startups ever, raising a $750-million-plus from backers like Masa Son’s SoftBank and George Soros, according to PitchBook. It took a $10 million PPP loan in April from Town Centre Bank. Says a spokesperson of the loan, “We can confirm that Proterra received a Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan earlier this year, which supported our ability to maintain a full workforce as we’ve navigated the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond that, we do not comment on financial matters involving the company.”</p>



<p>Lordstown Motors, an EV pickup truck startup that raised $675 million in August as part of a merger with a Spac called DiamondPeak Holdings, took a $1 million PPP loan. It will keep the cash. It recently told shareholders it&nbsp;“intends to use the entire PPP Loan amount for qualifying expenses and to apply for forgiveness of the loan in accordance with the terms of the CARES Act.”</p>



<p><em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maneetahuja/2020/04/20/crony-capitalism-why-the-best-connected-businesses-got-much-of-the-sba-coronavirus-cash/?sh=2f5e1d175a3b">was also first</a>&nbsp;to report Nikola Motor Co., the once high-flying electric startup, took $4.1 million in PPP loans as it consummated a merger with a Spac called VectorIQ. After billionaire founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2020/04/24/the-billionaire-founder-of-nikola-motors-explains-why-his-33b-company-needs-small-business-rescue-cash/?sh=2b9d8fa9362a">Trevor Milton said Nikola would keep its PPP funds</a>, the company eventually returned its bailout cash. Nikola’s soaring stock made Milton into a billionaire many times, but then he was quickly ousted from the company amid regulatory investigations into the company’s disclosures. A direct investment from General Motors was recently withdrawn, slamming Nikola’s stock. Milton’s net worth has plummeted alongside the pricking of Nikola’s pie-in-the-sky valuation.</p>



<p>If anything, Milton’s wax-winged rise to multi-billionaire status is a grim reminder of the hype and speculation behind today’s EV fortunes. No doubt they are being fueled by&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2020/08/19/the-inside-story-of-robinhoods-billionaire-founders-option-kid-cowboys-and-the-wall-street-sharks-that-feed-on-them/?sh=790f4e2d268d">get-rich-quick Robinhood options traders</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2020/11/19/the-looming-spac-meltdown/?sh=d02d47770d7e">well-compensated Spac promoters</a>&nbsp;spitting out new fortunes by the month. But, before today’s crop of EV startups struck it rich, they needed government rescue cash.</p>



<p><em><strong>Disclosure: Forbes Media LLC confirmed on July 6, 2020 that it received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $5 million to $10 million on April 15.</strong></em></p>



<p>&#8211;<em>By Antoine Gara, Forbes Staff &amp; Eliza Haverstock, Forbes Staff</em></p>


The 18th Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition

Electric Vehicle Bailout: Car Startups Took $50 Million In Taxpayer Cash, Then Soared By $75 Billion


<p><strong>Topline</strong> In an effort to beef up the firm&#8217;s balance sheet and capitalize on massive stock gains this year, electric-carmaker Tesla said on Tuesday it will raise up to $5 billion in a new stock offering, the second time since September that the firm&#8217;s raised cash by issuing new shares.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h4>



<p>In a Tuesday regulatory&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312520312194/d60067d8k.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>, Tesla said it could issue up to 7.8 million new shares based on Monday&#8217;s closing stock price, increasing the number of shares outstanding to roughly 955.6 million.</p>



<p>The firm said it plans to use offering proceeds to &#8220;further strengthen&#8221; its balance sheet by investing in high-grade bonds, cash equivalents or U.S. government securities.</p>



<p>Tesla shares are down 1% on Tuesday following the announcement, but still up an eye-popping 660% this year alone; meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has climbed 37%.</p>



<p>The firm previously <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312520236699/d931870d424b5.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> another $5 billion capital raise on September 1 after year-to-date stock gains of roughly 450%.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE&nbsp;</h4>



<p>&#8220;Now in a clear position of strength and out of the red ink with major factory build-outs on the horizon (in Austin and Berlin), Tesla is raising enough capital to get the balance sheet and capital structure to further firm up its growing cash position and slowly get out of its debt situation,&#8221; Wedbush analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe wrote on Tuesday.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



<p>Founded in 2003, Tesla went public on the Nasdaq exchange in June 2010 at an offering price of $17 per share. Shares have rallied this year amid a broader market boom for high-flying tech stocks, and much of the surge has happened in just the past month after S&amp;P Global announced in mid-November that it will&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/17/elon-musk-fortune-surges-5-billion-tesla-joining-sp-500/">add Tesla to the S&amp;P 500</a>&nbsp;Index on December 21, a move that should drive up demand for Tesla shares given the number of index and mutual funds tracking the S&amp;P.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h4>



<p>$600 billion. That&#8217;s how much Tesla topped in market value on Monday, making it nearly three times more valuable than the world&#8217;s second-most valuable automaker, Toyota. This year&#8217;s stock surge has boosted Musk&#8217;s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">net worth</a> to roughly $141 billion, <em>Forbes</em> estimates. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON&#8217;T KNOW</h2>



<p>S&amp;P Global hasn&#8217;t yet announced which firm Tesla will replace on the S&amp;P 500.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/11/17/elon-musk-fortune-surges-5-billion-tesla-joining-sp-500/">Elon Musk’s Fortune Surges $6 Billion After S&amp;P 500 Makes Tesla Its Largest-Ever Addition</a> <em>(Forbes)</em></p>



<p><em>By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/"></a>Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Elon Musk Reveals Tesla Model Y Crossover; To Start At $39,000

Tesla Is Raising Another $5 Billion To Capitalize On Stock’s Near-700% Surge This Year

Premiere Of A24’s “Uncut Gems” – Red Carpet

How Hip-Hop Superstar Travis Scott Has Become Corporate America’s Brand Whisperer


<p>Some of the world’s richest people publicly congratulated Joe Biden’s historic presidential victory over the weekend, even though billionaire Donald Trump hasn’t yet admitted defeat.</p>



<p>One billionaire—hedge fund cowboy Bill Ackman, whose&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/william-ackman/?sh=3e214709298d">net worth</a>&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;estimates at $2 billion—directly advised Trump to concede in a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/billackman/status/1325225698248839168?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>. “There comes a time in the battle when one should fold the tent. Instead focus on your accomplishments over the last four years,” Ackman wrote Saturday. “Concede graciously and call for unity from all who have supported you.”</p>



<p>Other billionaires congratulated Biden on his win, including Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates. “I look forward to working with the new administration and leaders on both sides in Congress on getting the surging pandemic under control,” Gates&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1325138315964682246?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;shortly after Biden was projected as the winner by the Associated Press on Saturday.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s a notable reaction from the third richest person in the world. As the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gates, who’s currently worth $118 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2020/04/Gates-Foundation-Expands-Commitment-to-COVID-19-Response-Calls-for-International-Collaboration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pledged</a>&nbsp;$300 million from his charitable foundation for vaccine development and other efforts. He’s also criticized the U.S. response to date,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/09/20/bill-gates-us-needs-to-own-up-to-the-fact-that-we-didnt-do-a-good-job/?sh=12a76b653fb8">telling</a>&nbsp;Fox News in September that “we did a very poor job” and need to &#8220;own up to the fact.”</p>



<p>The world’s richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also chimed in on Instagram. “Unity, empathy, and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era,” the ecommerce executive, who we estimate is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=451ac1ea1b23">worth</a>&nbsp;$190 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTZ-TyHqjN/?igshid=11uu42usw74ba" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>&nbsp;as the caption to a photo of Biden and Harris high-fiving.</p>



<p>A few of Biden’s billionaire donors also cheered his win. Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, whose net worth <em>Forbes</em> estimates at nearly $20 billion, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a> $100,000 to his campaign. She celebrated Harris’ historic ascendency as the first woman and first Black American and Asian American person to become vice president in a Saturday tweet, describing the achievement as a “glass ceiling shattered once and for all.”</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">We celebrate our democracy, our common humanity, and a glass ceiling shattered once and for all. <a href="https://t.co/IhvGLBcALd">pic.twitter.com/IhvGLBcALd</a></p>&mdash; Laurene Powell Jobs (@laurenepowell) <a href="https://twitter.com/laurenepowell/status/1325124457262850052?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<p>Former venture capitalist-turned-media personality&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chris-sacca/?sh=37a2ca44220a">Chris Sacca</a>, who with his wife Crystal Sacca donated $420,000 of their estimated $1.1 billion fortune to Biden, also applauded the election’s outcome. “Joe and Kamala bring science, innovation and an understanding of the climate opportunity back to the White House,”&nbsp; Sacca&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/sacca/status/1325226113119891456?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Saturday, saying he gave that statement to a news organization owned by conservative media tycoon (and longtime Trump friend) Rupert Murdoch, but the news organization told Sacca they weren’t going to publish it. “I couldn’t be more bullish” about what Biden’s administration means for investors, he added.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“I want to congratulate @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris on a historic win,” Illinois governor and billionaire J.B. Pritzker&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/GovPritzker/status/1325113433487003657?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>, adding that he’s looking forward to working with their administration.&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;previously reported that Pritzker and his wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a>&nbsp;$1.4 million to Biden’s campaign, and that his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jb-pritzker/?sh=b22443b38146">net worth</a>&nbsp;is estimated around $3.5 billion.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Entertainment billionaires Oprah Winfrey and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2020/09/01/from-poor-as-hell-to-billionaire-how-tyler-perry-changed-show-business-forever/?sh=6a25b7e234b5">Tyler Perry</a>&nbsp;also weighed in. Winfrey, who we&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/oprah-winfrey/?sh=8e46c155745f">estimate</a>&nbsp;is worth $2.6 billion, hailed Biden’s win as a “reset” for the “soul of America.” Perry, who&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;estimates to be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/tyler-perry/?sh=5707ea8e13dd">worth</a>&nbsp;$1 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/tylerperry/status/1325165060008783880?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;Saturday that “change is here,” adding, “I’m sitting here in tears!”</p>



<p>Trump wasn’t the only billionaire running in 2020. Climate change activist Tom Steyer and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg also ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination. After dropping out, Steyer and his wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/10/19/at-least-67-billionaires-made-six-figure-donations-to-committees-supporting-joe-biden-in-last-3-months/?sh=5e3944951bd2">donated</a>&nbsp;$640,000 to Biden from their $1.4 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/thomas-steyer/?sh=396bdad073f5">fortune</a>, while Bloomberg—who spent $1 billion on his own campaign—gave&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2020/10/31/the-top-5-richest-backers-of-joe-biden/?sh=126cecfa6413">$15 million</a>&nbsp;of his nearly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-bloomberg/?sh=15ef5ad61417">$55 billion</a>&nbsp;fortune to various progressive organizations. Both men&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer/status/1325114359832473600?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">congratulated</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1325118275441881088?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Biden</a>&nbsp;on his win.</p>



<p>Virgin founder Richard Branson, who is British (and who we estimate is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/?sh=1a93afbd6ff5">worth</a> $4.6 billion) offered international best wishes to Biden as president-elect. “Now is the time to bring America together as a United States and start the healing,” Branson <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/richardbranson/status/1325163037607694338?s=20" target="_blank">tweeted</a>. “The world will be rooting for that.”</p>



<p><em>By Lisette Voytko, Forbes Staff</em></p>


US-ECONOMICS-GATES

Here’s How Bill Gates And Other Billionaires Are Reacting To Biden’s Election Victory


<p class="has-drop-cap">High-flying video conferencing service Zoom, which has seen skyrocketing demand during the coronavirus pandemic, is now worth more than ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.</p>



<p>As of 2:30 p.m. ET, Zoom sported a market valuation of $139 billion, compared to Exxon’s $138.9 billion. Zoom began the year with a market cap of $19 billion. While Zoom posted $1.35 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Exxon, by comparison, posted $213.8 billion in revenue during that time period.</p>



<p>Exxon <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/News/Newsroom/News-releases/2020/1029_ExxonMobil-plans-reduction-to-US-staffing-levels" target="_blank">announced</a> on Thursday that it would lay off 1,900 U.S. employees, the latest effort to reduce costs and improve efficiency during the pandemic. Exxon has seen its operations pressured by coronavirus like other energy companies, many of which have taken steps to improve balance sheets, reduce staff and in some cases suspend dividends. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. oil benchmark, currently trades at around $36 per barrel, down from over $62 as recently as January.</p>



<p>Zoom founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/eric-yuan/#69410bec61bf">Eric Yuan</a>, meanwhile, has seen his own fortune nearly double over the past three months. Since appearing on The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">Forbes 400</a>&nbsp;list of America’s wealthiest people, which used stock prices from July 24, his net worth has nearly doubled, rising from $11 billion to $21.3 billion as of 2:30 p.m. ET on October 29.</p>



<p>Yuan’s fortune has soared in tandem with Zoom’s business, which has grown at a fast clip as millions of people working from home continue to rely on video-conferencing. Zoom is one of the best performing stocks so far in 2020, largely weathering the pandemic-induced sell-off in March and rising by more than 600% over the year.</p>



<p>The company handily&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.zoom.us/news-releases/news-release-details/zoom-reports-second-quarter-results-fiscal-year-2021#:~:text=Revenue%3A%20Total%20revenue%20for%20the,quarter%20of%20fiscal%20year%202020." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">beat earnings expectations</a>&nbsp;in the second quarter ended August 31, with $663.5 million in revenue (far outpacing analysts’ forecasts of $500.5 million)—and it expects to keep growing at a rapid pace. Zoom now forecasts up to $690 million in revenue for the current quarter (through the end of October) ; the company also raised its financial guidance for the full fiscal year, through January 2021, to almost $2.4 billion in revenue, up from $623 million for the year through January 2020, as it takes into account even more growing “demand for remote work solutions for businesses.”</p>



<p>Yuan isn’t the only one getting richer from his company’s success. Zoom’s chief financial officer since 2017, Kelly Steckelberg, has also seen her fortune grow. She debuted on the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/self-made-women/">Forbes Richest Self Made Women</a> list on October 13 with a net worth of $255 million. She is now worth more than $340 million.</p>



<p><em>-By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Video Conferencing Software Zoom Goes Public On Nasdaq Exchange

Zoom Is Now Worth More Than ExxonMobil—And Founder Eric Yuan’s Net Worth Has Nearly Doubled In Three Months


<p>Elon Musk on Monday hinted at his plans to take SpaceX’s space internet venture, Starlink, public in several years when revenue growth is “smooth and predictable” as the firm, which eventually aims to provide broadband around the world, is servicing towns in Washington ravaged by wildfires along the U.S. West Coast.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h4>



<p>The Tesla CEO revealed his plans on Twitter, saying small retail investors will “get top priority” when the company is listed: “You can hold me to it.”</p>



<p>Investors may be waiting a while — Musk said he will only take the company public in several years when revenue growth is smooth and predictable, adding: “Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow.”.</p>



<p>Last year, Musk&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/15/musk-on-starlink-internet-satellites-spacex-has-sufficient-capital.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>&nbsp;he believed Starlink would be an important revenue stream for SpaceX, with ambitions to provide high-speed internet around the world.</p>



<p>It comes as the company is assisting the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division as it responds to towns devastated by wildfires, providing internet access to emergency responders and the public.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>In February, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/spacex-likely-to-spin-off-starlink-business-and-pursue-an-ipo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told investors</a>&nbsp;of the company’s plans to spin out Starlink into a separate business and take the company public.&nbsp;</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



<p>Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious internet-from-space project, involving a constellation of thousands of satellites that will deliver high speed internet access across the globe. SpaceX is optimistic about Starlink’s future. The company says it is already seeing an “extraordinary demand” from potential customers for its satellite broadband service, CNBC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/spacex-starlink-extraordinary-demand-with-nearly-700000-interested.html#:~:text=Investing%20in%20Space-,SpaceX%20says%20Starlink%20internet%20has%20'extraordinary%20demand%2C'%20with,nearly%20700%2C000%20interested%20in%20service&amp;text=SpaceX%20asked%20regulators%20if%20it,5%20million%20from%201%20million." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>, with nearly 700,000 individuals in the US alone. Starlink’s website says it is targeting the US and Canada in 2020 and rapidly expanding “to near global coverage” by 2021.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h4>



<p>Elon Musk tweeted: “We will&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1310672832783884290?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">probably IPO Starlink</a>, but only several years in the future when revenue growth is smooth &amp; predictable. Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow haha. I’m a huge fan of small retail investors. Will make sure they get top priority. You can hold me to it.”</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT&nbsp;</h4>



<p>Starlink’s enormous constellation of satellites have proven controversial since the first set was launched last year. Some complain they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/12/stars-astronomy-spacex-satellite-elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">obstruct the night sky</a>&nbsp;and the European Space Agency said it had to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/03/european-satellite-in-near-collision-with-elon-musk-spacex-craft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alter the trajectory&nbsp;</a>of one of its observation satellites to avoid a collision with a Starlink satellite.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h4>



<p>The race for space has only just begun and Musk isn’t the only billionaire with his eyes set skyward. Jeff Bezos will be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/07/31/amazon-is-going-to-add-3000-more-satellites-into-earths-orbit--and-people-are-not-happy/#2581898d7628">overseeing</a>&nbsp;Amazon’s own constellation of internet-providing satellites, Project Kuiper, which received FCC approval this summer. Bezos’ Blue Origin is also involved in the space race, currently developing reusable launch vehicles.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/spacex-likely-to-spin-off-starlink-business-and-pursue-an-ipo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Musk’s SpaceX Plans a Spinoff, IPO for Starlink Business</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/18/billionaire-elon-musk-raises-19-billion-in-new-funding-for-spacex/#59a59c272404">Billionaire Elon Musk Raises $1.9 Billion In New Funding For SpaceX</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2020/02/06/an-ipo-of-spacexs-starlink-business-would-let-investors-bet-on-elon-musk-disrupting-another-industry/#5ee646097b78">An IPO of SpaceX’s Starlink Business Would Let Investors Bet On Elon Musk Disrupting Another Industry</a> (Forbes)</p>



<p>&#8211;<em>-BY Robert Hart, Forbes Staff</em></p>


gettyimages-1130598362-594×594

Billionaire Elon Musk Teases IPO For Starlink, SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Business


<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">Elon Musk</a>&nbsp;intends to expand Tesla’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TSLA</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla">-5.6%</a>&nbsp;lead in electric vehicles by shifting to a new, bigger type of lithium-ion cell that’s 56% cheaper and by massively increasing battery production to create a huge competitive advantage. But it’s going to take a few years to make them at high-volume and the manufacturing system needed to do that isn’t quite ready.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The billionaire entrepreneur, who has hyped the electric-car maker’s “Battery Day” for months, used the event staged in the parking lot of Tesla’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters to unveil the 4680 cell company engineers developed in-house. More than double the size of the current 2170-format cells Tesla uses, the new chemical devices provide five times the energy, 16% more range, and six-times the power, according to Musk and Drew Baglino, senior vice president for powertrain and energy engineering.</p>



<p>Limited production of the new cells has begun at a pilot battery factory in Silicon Valley, though it’s going to take time to ramp up to the terawatt-hour level of output Musk envisions. “It&#8217;s probably about a year before we get to the 10-gigawatt-hour annualized rate with the pilot plant, and this is just a pilot plant. The actual production plants will be more on the order of maybe 200-gigawatt hours, maybe more over time.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"><p>It&#8217;s close to working, but it&#8217;s not even now at the pilot plant level.</p></blockquote>



<p>But he then clarified that are still kinks in the new production system for the 4680 cells. “To be clear, I would like to not say that right now it’s just totally working. It&#8217;s close to working, but it&#8217;s not even now at the pilot plant level. It is close to working. All I can think it&#8217;s fair to say probably it does work, but with not a good … not a high yield.”</p>



<p>While Musk earlier this month had said the event would be “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1306504307148075008?s=20" target="_blank">very insane</a>,” he dialed that back on Sept. 21 by noting that Battery Day announcements affect “will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022.” And even as Tesla scales up production of its new cell, it will continue to buy 2170 cells from suppliers Panasonic, LG Chem and China’s CATL.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">We intend to increase, not reduce battery cell purchases from Panasonic, LG &amp; CATL (possibly other partners too). However, even with our cell suppliers going at maximum speed, we still foresee significant shortages in 2022 &amp; beyond unless we also take action ourselves.</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1308149191684710400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<p>To accommodate production of its new battery, Tesla plans to build a factory to make cathode material, and it’s switching from the use of graphite in the anode to lower-cost silicon. The company has also acquired rights to source lithium it needs from 10,000 acres in Nevada, though Musk didn’t disclose the location of the property and what’s spending on that operation.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The battery news followed the company’s annual shareholder meeting, done drive-in movie style this year owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, with attendees watching the event from their Tesla vehicles in the company lot. Honks and beeps replaced the cheering for Musk typically heard at company events.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Of note during the annual meeting portion was the consideration of two items proposed by activist Tesla investors who want better disclosure of worker conditions and their treatment as well as a commitment to ensure that all raw materials needed for batteries and other components are sourced ethically. Tesla’s board recommended voting against both measures, and they appear likely to fail.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While the discussion of the new cell was highly detailed, the company’s multiyear timetable for introducing it as well as new advancements in its production system to allow for lower-cost manufacturing, appeared to disappoint investors. Tesla fell about 7% in after-hours Nasdaq&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NDAQ</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/nasdaq">+1%</a>&nbsp;trading to $394.98, after finishing regular trading down 5.6%.</p>



<p>Battery Day, like most recent Tesla events, was attended mainly by fans of the company. During a concluding Q&amp;A session, there were no questions from either equity analysts or journalists.</p>



<p><em>By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Tesla Has A Cheaper, Bigger Battery Cell–But Needs Time To Reach ‘Terawatt-Hour’ Production


<p><strong>Meet the billionaire winners and losers of the dot-com bubble, Great Recession and Covid-19 crash.</strong></p>



<p class="has-drop-cap"><strong>Crashes, wipe-outs, recessions.&nbsp;</strong>Fortunes are often forged, or fumbled away, in the fire of economic downturns. When the Covid-19 pandemic began to sweep the world in early 2020, the wealth of U.S. billionaires plummeted in lockstep with the stock market. Yet, just six months after the market bottomed out, and with the coronavirus still to be contained,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">The Forbes 400 richest Americans are doing better than ever, worth a record $3.2 trillion</a>&nbsp;in all. In other words, the pain—at least for the ultra-rich—was remarkably short lived.</p>



<p>So&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;dug through the archives to compare how America’s billionaire class has fared during and after the past three big market drops: the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, the Great Recession of the late 2000s and the Covid-19 meltdown of this year. Each downturn hit different industries hardest, but a common theme is clear: The billionaires who are down are rarely out, and there are always clever thinkers amassing new riches, even when times are tough.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The Dot-Com Crash</h1>



<p>As a huge wave of consumers around the globe joined the internet, rabid investors hoping to get in on the tech boom poured funds into wildly unprofitable startups promising to change the world. The S&amp;P 500 hit a record high in March 2000. Then the bubble began to burst, sending the S&amp;P down 50% over the next two and a half years. Jeff Bezos began an April 2001 letter to Amazon shareholders with a single word: “Ouch.” There were 298 billionaires on the 2000 Forbes 400 list, worth a total of $1.2 trillion; by 2002, the list had lost 73 billionaires and $350 billion in aggregate net worth. Markets, which were also hit by the 9/11 terror attacks, didn’t fully recover until May 2007—more than seven years after the bubble popped.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading"><strong>Losers:</strong></h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Bill Gates</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47334" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-1185999096-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>(Photo by Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Shares of Microsoft plummeted 63% in 2001, helping shave $9 billion off Gates’ net worth for the 2001 Forbes 400 (and he’d drop by another $11 billion in 2002). Yet there were promising signs: The federal government announced that it would no longer seek to break up Microsoft, which was just a month away from releasing a new product: the hit Xbox.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Monte Zweben</strong></h3>



<p>Of the 51 people who fell off The Forbes 400 in 2001, none fell harder than Zweben, who took his ecommerce software startup Blue Martini public in 2000—then&nbsp;watched as 98% of his $1.4 billion fortune evaporated in less than a year when shares nosedived. Zweben has founded and run a handful of tech outfits since, but has never made it back onto The Forbes 400.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Stanley Druckenmiller</strong></h3>



<p>The head of George Soros’ Quantum Fund, Druckenmiller struck gold shorting the British Pound in 1992 but eight years later made an ill-timed bet on tech at the height of the bubble. “I bought $6 billion worth of tech stocks, and in six weeks I had lost $3 billion in that one play,”&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2018/05/16/druckenmillers-big-mistake/" target="_blank">he later recalled</a>. “I didn’t learn anything. I already knew that I wasn’t supposed to do that. I was just an emotional basketcase and I couldn’t help myself.”</p>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading"><strong>Winners:</strong></h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Mark Cuban</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47631" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1158140219-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>He got rich selling internet radio company Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in cash and stock in 1999—near the top of the dot-com bubble. Then he made an even smarter move, using collars to protect his Yahoo stock from a price drop, which soon came when the shares plummeted 90% in 2000.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Leon Levy</strong></h3>



<p>The investor who helped build Oppenheimer &amp; Co. made more than $100 million shorting the Nasdaq as the&nbsp;market sputtered. When the longtime optimist spoke with&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;in 2002, he was still bearish about a market recovery. “The outlook for profits is disappointing,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1209/174.html#4b3528df476b">Levy warned</a>.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Thomas Bailey</strong></h3>



<p>The founder of mutual fund giant Janus Capital managed to find a way to sell his shares high, even during the market low—thanks to an unusual agreement that gave him the right to sell his stake to Janus’ parent company for a price based on the prior year’s profits. In 2001, with Janus struggling along with the rest of the economy, Bailey decided to sell—forcing the company to purchase his shares for&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-12-me-56332-story.html" target="_blank">double their market value</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The Great Recession</h1>



<p>A real estate market run rampant came crashing down in late 2007, sending the U.S. economy spiraling into a historic recession. The federal government&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/heres-how-much-2008-bailouts-really-cost" target="_blank">spent some $500 billion on bailouts</a>&nbsp;for the likes of big banks, automakers and insurers. In 2009, more than two-thirds of the list was poorer than the year before as the aggregate wealth of the bunch fell by $300 billion. The S&amp;P, which peaked in October 2007, didn’t make up its losses for five and a half years.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading"><strong>Winners:</strong></h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Warren Buffett</strong></h3>



<p>The crash hit the Oracle of Omaha hard at first, with Berkshire Hathaway stock tumbling 32% in 2008, along with the broader market. But the famed value investor, who has long preached being “fearful when others are greedy” and “greedy when others are fearful,&#8221; used the crash to go&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html" target="_blank">bargain hunting</a>. He snapped up preferred stock of titans like Goldman Sachs, General Electric and Dow Chemical on the cheap, bets that earned billions as the companies recovered.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Andrew Beal</strong></h3>



<p>In 2004, as personal and corporate debt ballooned in the market runup, the shrewd banker began hoarding cash. He struck when the markets began to tumble in 2007, gobbling up loans and assets from struggling banks for pennies on the dollar, quickly juicing his profits. “This is the opportunity of my lifetime,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/banking-andy-beal-business-wall-street-beal.html#3d7b4261a4d5">Beal told&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em></a>&nbsp;in the middle of the crisis.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>John Paulson</strong></h3>



<p>The biggest short: Paulson, a hedge funder who was convinced the economy was on the verge of collapse, began shorting the subprime real estate market before the crash. He&nbsp;pocketed some $4 billion from the bold bet, catapulting him from less than $300 million in net worth to a spot on The Forbes 400 in a single year. By 2008, he’d be worth $4.5 billion.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The COVID Crash</h1>



<p>The Covid crash came on fast, with S&amp;P 500 diving 34% from its February 2020 peak in less than a month, as the virus spread around the globe. But, for most members of The Forbes 400, the downturn didn’t last long. The S&amp;P recouped all of its losses in just 181 days, and was again hitting new record highs by August 18. America’s richest billionaires are, once again,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">richer than ever</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading"><strong>Losers:</strong></h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Micky Arison</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="855" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-855x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47632" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-855x1024.jpg 855w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-scaled-300x359.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-scaled-600x718.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-251x300.jpg 251w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-768x920.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-1283x1536.jpg 1283w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-614064188-1710x2048.jpg 1710w" sizes="(max-width: 855px) 100vw, 855px" /><figcaption>  (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Like other cruise operators, his Carnival Corp. has been crippled by the coronavirus. In early 2020, more than 700 passengers on a ship operated by Carnival’s Princess Cruises&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/04/24/coronavirus-cleanup-how-cruise-ship-sanitized-after-outbreak-diamond-princess/5136469002/" target="_blank">reportedly became infected</a>&nbsp;with the virus. In May, Congress said it’s probing the company’s virus policies. (Carnival has said it will cooperate with the investigation.) Meanwhile, shares sunk 68% from last year’s Forbes 400 list through late July 2020, knocking Arison’s fortune down by 31%, to $5.6 billion.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Edward DeBartolo, Jr.</strong></h3>



<p>The real estate mogul, who pleaded guilty to not reporting a bribe from a Louisiana government official in 1998, got a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in February. Financially, things have been a bit rockier: Shares of Simon Property Group, which make up much of his fortune, have fallen 60% since last year’s list as America’s largest mall owner reels from the crisis. He and his family sold their DeBartolo Realty to Simon in 1998 for $1.5 billion in stock.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Harold Hamm</strong></h3>



<p>&#8220;It just grabbed my imagination that anybody could find this hidden, ancient wealth and it was yours,&#8221; the fracking pioneer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/066.html#73d8b86d3681">gushed to&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;about his love of the oil business in 2009</a>. What a difference a decade makes. With a price war and lower demand for fuel cratering oil prices, Hamm’s having a tough go of it these days. His fortune has fallen $3.7 billion since last year’s Forbes 400 as shares of his Continental Resources have dropped 43%.</p>



<h1 class="has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-text-align-center wp-block-heading"><strong>Winners:</strong></h1>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Eric Yuan</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47633" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-scaled-600x401.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GettyImages-1173631560-2048x1367.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>With the world working from home, the Zoom founder <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/19/zoom-zoom-zoom-the-exclusive-inside-story-of-the-new-billionaire-behind-techs-hottest-ipo/">is cashing in big</a> as his video conferencing app has become a corporate darling. Shares are up more than 500% since Zoom’s April 2019 IPO, launching Yuan onto The Forbes 400 list for the first time, with an $11 billion fortune.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Reed Hastings</strong></h3>



<p>His stay-at-home staple Netflix has reaped the rewards of a world in quarantine, with hits like “Tiger King” and “Extraction.” The streaming service&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2020/09/07/how-netflixs-reed-hastings-rewrote-the-hollywood-script/#5620b13215df">has added around 1 million subscriptions a month</a>&nbsp;in the U.S. and Canada, plus another 2 million a month abroad, since the pandemic began.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Ernest Garcia III</strong></h3>



<p>Carvana—the “Amazon of used cars” that he cofounded as part of his billionaire father Ernest Garcia II’s DriveTime Automotive Group—is another Covid lockdown hit, with shares up 77% since last year’s list. Carvana, which the Garcias spun out of DriveTime and took public in 2017, allows customers to buy and sell cars online.</p>



<p><em>-Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Forbes Media Centennial Celebration

Billionaires On The Brink: How The Forbes 400 Makes And Loses Billions During Market Crashes

Tyler Perry Studios Grand Opening Gala

From “Poor as Hell” to Billionaire: How Tyler Perry Changed Show Business Forever


<p>The world&#8217;s richest person,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?list=rtb/">Jeff Bezos</a>, is wealthier than he&#8217;s ever been. Early Wednesday he crossed a milestone previously unseen in the nearly four decades&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>&nbsp;has been tracking net worths: With Amazon stock edging up 2% as of Wednesday afternoon, Bezos&#8217; net worth is up by $4.9 billion, making the 56-year-old the world&#8217;s first-ever person to amass a $200 billion fortune.</p>



<p>As of 1:50 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, the Amazon founder and CEO is worth $204.6 billion—nearly $90 billion more than the world&#8217;s second-richest person,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=rtb/">Bill Gates</a>, who&#8217;s currently worth $116.1 billion.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Even adjusting for inflation, <em>Forbes</em> believes Bezos&#8217; fortune is the largest ever amassed. The person to come closest is Gates, who was the world&#8217;s first-ever centibillionaire. Near the height of the dot-com bubble, when Microsoft reached its then-peak in 1999, Gates&#8217; net worth surpassed $100 billion, roughly $158 billion in today&#8217;s dollars.</p>



<p>Fueled by the change in consumer habits as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon stock is up nearly 80% since the beginning of the year, and Bezos&#8217; net worth, which was roughly $115 billion on January 1, has skyrocketed in tandem. Bezos’ roughly 11% stake in Amazon makes up more than 90% of his fortune. He also owns the&nbsp;<em>Washington Post</em>, aerospace company Blue Origin and other private investments.</p>



<p>Bezos would be even richer had he not gone through the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/08/01/mackenzie-bezos-now-officially-worlds-third-richest-woman/">most expensive divorce</a>&nbsp;settlement in history last year. When he split from ex-wife,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mackenzie-scott/?list=rtb/">MacKenzie Scott</a>, last July, he agreed to give her 25% of his Amazon stake, a chunk of stock now worth $63 billion. Even after giving away $1.7 billion in charitable gifts earlier this year, Scott is currently the world&#8217;s 14th-richest person and second-richest woman, behind L&#8217;Oréal heiress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/francoise-bettencourt-meyers/">Françoise Bettencourt Meyers</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Bezos isn’t alone among tech titans with fortunes surging to massive new heights. Facebook&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?list=rtb/">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;ended Tuesday as a brand-new centibillionaire, worth $103.1 billion after adding $3.4 billion to his fortune in one day, on Facebook stock gains. That surge continued early Wednesday afternoon, with Zuckerberg up an astonishing $6 billion just on Wednesday as of publication time. He&#8217;s now worth $109.1 billion.</p>



<p>There are now more centibillionaires on the planet than ever. Joining Bezos, Gates and the newly crowned Zuckerberg is LVMH chair&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=rtb/">Bernard Arnault</a>, who first joined the 12-figure ranks last year. Though his net worth slipped to about $80 billion at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in March, Arnault reclaimed the centibillionaire title in May and today is worth about $115 billion. This makes him the third-richest person on earth–$90 billion poorer than Jeff Bezos.</p>



<p><em><strong>Update 8/26/2020, 6:05 p.m.: A regulatory filing made public late Wednesday revealed that Bezos donated 7,548 Amazon shares–worth about $26 million–to an undisclosed nonprofit organization. At market close on Wednesday, Bezos was worth $205 billion.</strong></em></p>



<p><em>-Jonathan Ponciano, Forbes Staff</em></p>


Amazon CEO And Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos  Speaks At Air Force Association Air, Space And Cyber Conference

Jeff Bezos Becomes The First Person Ever Worth $200 Billion


<p><strong>After a disappointing season, the soccer superstar is eyeing the exit at Barcelona, but he still is on pace to reach that astronomical goal alongside Tiger Woods, Floyd Mayweather and, yes, Cristiano Ronaldo.</strong></p>



<p>The only move Lionel Messi really needs to make to become soccer’s next billion-dollar man is none at all. If the star forward simply shows up at Barcelona’s Camp Nou in September, he will end the 2020–21 season with more than $1 billion in career earnings, a victory only three athletes before him have won.</p>



<p>It looks like the high-fives may have to wait. After a yearlong battle with FC Barcelona, the Argentine icon is threatening to leave the club after 16 years, ditching the final year of a contract that could make&nbsp;him the highest-paid player in what has become the world’s most lucrative sport.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“Globalization has made soccer, always the world&#8217;s most popular sport, also the world’s most lucrative in terms of revenue generation,” says Stefan Szymanski, author of&nbsp;<em>Soccernomics</em>&nbsp;and a University of Michigan professor of sport management. “In soccer, there is more or less unfettered competition on a global scale—there are no drafts, salary caps, etc.—and the best players generally go to the highest bidder.”</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="594" height="396" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gettyimages-1167251285-594x594-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-45803" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gettyimages-1167251285-594x594-1.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gettyimages-1167251285-594x594-1-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>It’s the kind of free-market economics that until this year were the domain of independent contractors.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/2009/09/29/tiger-woods-billion-business-sports-tiger.html">Tiger Woods</a>&nbsp;was the first athlete to earn $1 billion while still competing when in 2009 he sunk $10.5 million in prize money and more than $100 million off the links, mostly through an endorsement deal with Nike.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2017/08/26/how-floyd-mayweather-became-boxings-1-billion-man/">Floyd Mayweather</a>&nbsp;landed the honor in 2017 after a bet on himself that removed legendary promoter Bob Arum from his corner and led to a string of self-produced pay-per-view bouts that brought in more than $25 million 12 times, including $275 million for his 2017 fight with Conor McGregor. Messi’s longtime rival&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/06/04/ronaldos-105-million-year-tops-messi-and-crowns-him-soccers-first-billion-dollar-man/">Cristiano Ronaldo</a>&nbsp;became the first team-sport competitor to do it when he earned $105 million during the 2019-20 season.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2014/06/12/michael-jordan-is-a-billionaire-after-increasing-stake-in-hornets/">Michael Jordan</a>, who tallied $550 million in career earnings during his 15 years playing for the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards, remains the world’s only billionaire athlete, the bulk of his fortune created by a well-timed investment in the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets.</p>



<p>Messi’s arrival in the billion-dollar clubhouse will mark a climactic chapter in what has been soccer’s most expensive sideshow since 2009, when he and Ronaldo&nbsp;first faced off on competing teams in Spain’s La Liga. The strutting and often shirtless Ronaldo&nbsp;perfected the sport’s showman brand while the media-shy Messi was hailed as the modest one, more interested in his footwork than footwear, as prolific a goal scorer as a wingman and a master at crediting teamwork.</p>



<p>Ronaldo, who is two years older, has become the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/08/03/social-medias-most-valuable-athletes-ronaldo-mcgregor-and-lebron-score/">world’s most popular celebrity</a>, with 443 million social followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter—and the most marketable athlete in the world, too. According to Hookit, which tracks social media sponsorship value, from January to July this year, he created $28 million in value for the brands he promoted through 275 social media posts and the 873 million engagements with them. He has a lifetime deal with Nike and a long-term partnership with Herbalife, as well as a lifestyle brand that started with his CR7 line of underwear in 2013 and has expanded to include shoes, perfume, denim, hotels, gyms and his latest offering introduced this month,&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://robbreport.com/style/accessories/cristiano-ronaldo-sunglasses-cr7-eyewear-2941551/" target="_blank">sunglasses</a>. Last season, Ronaldo earned $45 million of his $105 million off the pitch.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="594" height="396" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/gettyimages-1142682752-594x594.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-40860" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/gettyimages-1142682752-594x594.jpg 594w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/gettyimages-1142682752-594x594-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Messi is no endorsement slouch either, earning about $33 million annually through endorsement deals with lifetime partner Adidas, Lays, Mastercard, watchmaker Jacob &amp; Co, Qatar-based telecom Ooredoo and his new signature lifestyle brand launched last year with Ginny Hilfiger, sister of Tommy, at The Messi Store website. Hookit reports that from January to July this year, Messi put up 117 social media posts that received 235 million likes, comments or shares, creating $22 million in marketing value for the brands he promoted.</p>



<p>Barcelona is planning to pay its star forward $92 million this upcoming season, about a third of that in the form of performance incentives. Messi has been consistent earning those, posting 12 consecutive seasons with at least 31 goals and hitting 700 career goals in June, joining Ronaldo as the only active player at that level.</p>



<p>Until last week, soccer watchers were expecting the Argentine icon to sign a new&nbsp;deal on par with his current one to take him through retirement, but that was before his battle with Barcelona boiled over. The yearlong fight included a dustup over the midseason appointment of a manager that ended with his dismissal this week, a smear campaign against Messi and his wife reportedly dialed up by the club itself, and an embarrassing 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich that put an early finish to Barça’s Champions League title hopes. It was the first season in 12 years that Messi failed to win a trophy and one for which he took&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/03/30/lionel-messis-coronavirus-wage-cut-could-cost-him-50-million/">a 70% cut in base pay</a>—$11 million—after the pandemic halted play for three months.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47209" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-scaled-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-scaled-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/GettyImages-455404136-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



<p>Where he lands—and how much he will make there—remains to be seen, although it is unlikely any club can afford to pay him the salary Barcelona can. Messi could do what Ronaldo did when he left Real Madrid&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2018/07/10/cristiano-ronaldo-takes-a-wage-cut-and-leaves-real-madrid-for-juventus/">for Italy’s Juventus</a>&nbsp;and make up for lower gross pay with a tax scheme that keeps his net pay level.</p>



<p>Or if Barcelona’s new manager, Ronald Koeman, can&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/53827543" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bring peace back to Barcelona</a>, he could make the whole thing happen this year after all.</p>



<p>“He is the best player in the world, and the best player in the world you want in your team; you don’t want him playing against you,” Koeman said at a Wednesday press conference.</p>



<p>No matter what Messi chooses, the billion-dollar honor is his to lose. Soccer’s No. 3 earner, Neymar, has so far earned $450 million in his career and stands to make less than $100 million this season. Neymar’s Paris Saint-Germain teammate Kylian Mbappé will make less than half that.</p>



<p><em>-Christina Settimi, Forbes Staff</em></p>


TOPSHOT-FBL-EUR-C1-BARCELONA-NAPOLI

The Next Billion-Dollar Athlete: Lionel Messi Closes In


<p>Tesla shares spiked 11.2% on Monday, boosting Elon Musk’s net worth by $7 billion to $83.6 billion. The hefty stock gain makes the 49-year-old entrepreneur the fifth-richest person in the world, pushing Musk ahead of Indian oil and gas tycoon Mukesh Ambani and investing luminary Warren Buffett.</p>



<p>Not that he’s keeping track. The eccentric billionaire says he’s indifferent to his standing on our rich list. “I really couldn’t care less,” Musk emailed Forbes about his net worth in July. “These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.”</p>



<p>Musk first rose to fifth place in late July, when his net worth topped $74 billion, but was soon surpassed by Ambani. Now Tesla shares are up nearly 32% in the past five days. With the stock on a tear, Musk’s fortune has more than tripled since mid-March, when he ranked 31st on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list. He owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes applies a discount to his shares because of the loans.</p>



<p>The stock jumped on Monday after an analyst upgraded his 12-month price target to $1,900; Tesla’s share price is currently $1,835.64. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives believes that Tesla, which opened a new factory in Shanghai in late 2019, is well-positioned to take advantage of increasing Chinese demand for electric vehicles. Ives also predicted that Musk will reveal “game-changing” news at the upcoming Battery Day on September 22.</p>



<p>Tesla is the most valuable automaker in the world, with a market capitalization of $342 billion despite producing substantially fewer vehicles than competitors such as Ford and Toyota. A five-for-one stock split will take effect after the market closes on August 28.</p>



<p><strong>FURTHER READING</strong></p>



<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2020/08/12/i-am-just-getting-started-maye-musk-on-her-new-book-modeling-mars-and-her-genius-boy-elon/" target="_blank">‘I Am Just Getting Started’: Maye Musk On Her New Book, Modeling, Mars And Her ‘Genius Boy’ Elon</a> <em>(Forbes Africa)</em></p>



<p><em>-Hayley C. Cuccinello, Forbes Staff</em></p>


gettyimages-490597722-594×594

Elon Musk Now The World’s Fifth-Richest Person (Again), After $7 Billion Bump From Tesla Stock Surge


<p><strong>Jeff Skoll</strong> <strong>has been funding pandemic preparedness for more than a decade, even longer than Bill Gates. In recent months, he’s increased his philanthropic giving to help combat Covid-19.</strong></p>



<p>Nine years ago, Jeff Skoll’s film company Participant Media partnered with Warner Brothers to put out <em>Contagion</em>, a movie about a global pandemic that started with a virus from a bat. An American businesswoman (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) came home from a trip to China and unknowingly spread a novel, and at times, deadly disease. While many viewed the film as pure science fiction, Skoll had ulterior motives. He hoped the movie would help build support for funding the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also warn the world about the potential dangers of a global pandemic.</p>



<p>Skoll, 55, became a billionaire just over two decades ago as a result of stock he received as eBay’s first president. He left eBay in 2001 and has since co-produced more than 100 films and TV programs, all with socially relevant themes including the climate change documentary <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em> featuring Al Gore, factory farming documentary <em>Food Inc., </em>the miniseries <em>When They See Us</em> and the 2016 Academy Award best picture winner <em>Spotlight</em>, about <em>The Boston Globe’s</em> investigations into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. </p>



<p>While his impassioned film-making pretty much ground to a halt temporarily with California’s shelter-in-place orders, his 2011 movie&nbsp;<em>Contagion</em>&nbsp;has become the must watch-at-home hit of the pandemic—it’s the number one selling title to date this year, according to Warner Brothers, the distributor. (It won’t disclose the number of times it’s been rented or sold.) In late March, Participant,&nbsp;<em>Contagion</em>&nbsp;screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh worked with Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and other cast members to produce public service announcements about washing your hands and staying home.</p>



<p>Beyond backing a movie about a pandemic, Skoll has been funding pandemic preparedness and prevention since 2009 — six years before Bill Gates’ now well known TED talk warning about them &#8212; through the Skoll Global Threats Fund, to which he pledged $100 million. (The other threats: climate change, water scarcity, nuclear weapons and conflict in the Middle East.)</p>



<p>Since the start of this year, Skoll has contributed an additional $200 million to his charitable foundation—$100 million of which was announced in late April and will go toward fighting Covid-19. He put the other $100 million in earlier this year, he tells Forbes, adding that he hadn’t bothered to publicize it. “I don’t see this as a money squirt,” Skoll explains. “This is a resource allocation to an area we know well. And this is an emergency.”</p>



<p>Newly bulked up, the Skoll Foundation promised to quadruple its grantmaking this year to $200 million. New beneficiaries in 2020 include some of the poorest folks in Los Angeles and the contact tracing program being launched across California.“This is the rainy day we’ve all been saving for,” Skoll says of his charitable giving. “If not now, when?” </p>



<p>He’s been working up to 20 hours a day in his kitchen in Beverly Hills — on a call in early June, he jokes that it’s his “command center,” equipped with a couple of iPads, a MacBook and some bluetooth devices — talking to people around the globe, taking the pulse of the pandemic and searching out individuals, organizations and companies with new ideas. “Just the science, the learnings of the virus — almost every day there’s some revelation that we didn’t know,” says Skoll.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>The pandemics research that Skoll started funding through the Skoll Global Threats Fund spun off into a nonprofit called Ending Pandemics in January 2018, with a seed grant from Skoll. “It’s all about early detection and rapid response,” says Ending Pandemics President Dr. Mark Smolinski.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Skoll has been funding pandemic preparedness and prevention since 2009 — six years before Bill Gates’ TED talk warning about them — through the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which he spun off into Ending Pandemics in 2018.</h2>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>Skoll got wind of the novel coronavirus early on, back in December —where it started. “We had colleagues on the ground in Wuhan. We had an idea that a zoonotic disease had jumped to humans,” he says. By January he and his team began to be concerned about countries with trade ties to China — particularly in Africa, where some of the social entrepreneurs that the Skoll Foundation has supported are operating.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In early February, the Skoll Foundation made its first Covid-19 related grant: $3 million to the African Field Epidemiology Network, a group working with the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (the Africa CDC) to help coordinate African countries’ response and to boost surveillance and detection. The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation donated to the same group around the same time. Beginning with those two grants, says Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, “we were able to rally rapid responders to Addis Ababa [for training] and send them to Nigeria and Cameroon. We were able to scale up diagnostics.” Funding from others then followed, including the MasterCard foundation, Germany, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.  </p>



<p>In &nbsp;March&nbsp; it made a grant to the Southern African Center for Infectious Disease Surveillance Foundation (SACIDS) and a similar group in East Africa. One outcome: Mozambique, which had the infrastructure to test for Covid-19 but limited money to buy tests, got the needed funds and ramped up testing four-fold, according to Smolinski.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The Skoll foundation’s next move was to quickly create a fund for both its current and past grantees — mostly social entrepreneurs. Sixty-four organizations were given $50,000 grants. “We figured they would need emergency funding,” Skoll explains.</p>



<p>Though the Skoll Foundation has traditionally supported social entrepreneurs who work in lower income countries, in the past few months it has made some donations closer to home. Because Los Angeles County has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, Skoll reached out to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to offer assistance. In late April, his foundation made a $2 million gift to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, which is providing cash assistance to families hit hardest by Covid-19. </p>



<p>Skoll also connected with California Governor Gavin Newsom and his senior advisor on social innovation, Kathleen Kelly Janus. The Skoll Foundation is donating $8 million to support California’s response to Covid-19, starting with $4.1 million for the public awareness campaign around contact tracing, which Janus says “will be really critical to preventing a second wave of Covid-19.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Smolinski’s team, which had already partnered with Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital to build a crowdsourced symptom reporting tracker called Flu Near You in 2012 to show flu trends in neighborhoods and cities, rolled out Covid Near You in early March. The app lets people anonymously report if they’re feeling healthy or not, with zip code info, as  a way to track current and potential hotspots. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Skoll’s Ending Pandemics has partnered with governments and public health authorities in 36 countries — 11 of which have surveillance systems tracking Covid-19 and other infectious diseases.</h2>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>Ending Pandemics has partnered with governments and public health authorities in 36 countries — 11 of which have surveillance systems that Smolinski says are “up to speed.” One is Cambodia, a country of 14 million people, where all four telecom companies support a free mobile app that both receives info about disease and provides information. Calls have gone from 600 a day before the pandemic to 15,000, and the vast majority of the Covid-19 cases in the country were first identified through the hotline, Smolinski says. Cambodia, the country that took in a cruise ship no one else wanted, so far has just 129 cases and no deaths, he adds.</p>



<p>Through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic group with about 30 members launched by TED conference curator Chris Anderson with Jeff Skoll and Richard Branson, Skoll and others are supporting Boston-based Partners in Health, which responded to the Ebola crisis in 2014. The multi-million dollar grant from the Audacious Project enables Partners in Health to share its contact tracing expertise over the coming year with roughly 19 public health departments across the U.S. “We started by helping the state of Massachusetts put together a contact tracing system, and everyone else wanted to know what we were doing,” says Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health. “This funding has allowed us to expand our team. What we are hoping is that state and federal money will be forthcoming.” </p>



<p>Mukherjee applauds Skoll’s approach to philanthropy. “Jeff has always been a systems thinker, and that has been transformative for Partners In Health,” she says.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Skoll also contributed funding to an ambitious global project called the Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology Network — GIDEoN for short —being spearheaded by Columbia University epidemiologist Ian Lipkin, who directs the university’s Center for Infection and Immunity. Lipkin has lined up the equivalent of the National Institutes of Health in 12 countries including India, Brazil and China and together they’ll share information about outbreaks and disease samples. With GIDEoN,&nbsp; Lipkin explains, “we’re trying to upgrade the capacity for detecting infectious agents and toxins, particularly in the developing world.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>While Skoll has been involved in global philanthropy for nearly two decades, he now has an even more personal reason for being involved in the fight against deadly diseases. While working on Ebola in 2014, he contracted a rare tropical disease that took two years to diagnose. He took an 18 month medical leave of absence and is feeling better now.</p>



<p>Despite many challenges, Skoll is an optimist, even about pandemics. Yes, the number of cases will likely increase as U.S. states open back up, he says. But he’s hopeful that a treatment for Covid-19-an existing drug—can work and be scaled up for distribution sometime this summer. “I hope we can get the solutions in place in the next few months. I see a path to it,” he says.</p>



<p>As for future pandemics, Skoll sees a silver lining.  “There are so many zoonotic viruses that jump over from animals to humans. Most of them peter out and turn into something less lethal. I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see any terrible new pandemic any time soon, says Skoll.  “If anything, the world is on watch now.”</p>



<p><em>&#8211;  <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/">Kerry A. Dolan</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/worlds-billionaires">Billionaires</a></em></p>


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How The Billionaire Behind The Movie ‘Contagion’ Is Working To Stop This Pandemic—And The Next One


<p><strong>Elon Musk&#8217;s meteoric rise up the <em>Forbes</em> Billionaire List has continued this month, as he’s ascended past luminaries such as Warren Buffett and Steve Ballmer. As of Monday afternoon, Musk&#8217;s net worth surpassed <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#11a0831e3d78">$74 billion</a>, meaning he is now the fifth-richest person on the planet.</strong></p>



<p><strong>KEY FACTS</strong></p>



<ul><li>Musk, 49, is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, the electric vehicle company whose stock price has soared since March.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Tesla shares gained another 9.5% in Monday&#8217;s trading to $1,643.00, giving it a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/cramer-says-moves-in-tech-stocks-are-truly-insane-as-amazon-and-tesla-climb.html" target="_blank">60%</a> rise in just three weeks since June 29, and a nearly 300% increase in 2020 alone.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Tesla is now not only the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">world&#8217;s most valuable car company</a>, with a market cap of $304.5 billion, it’s worth more than Ford, Ferrari, General Motors and BMW <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">combined</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk was ranked <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/"> No. 31</a> on Forbes&#8217; Billionaires List as recently as mid-March, with a net worth just under $25 billion.</li></ul>



<ul><li>His fortune has nearly tripled since then, skyrocketing to $74.2 billion at the close of trading Monday, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#11a0831e3d78"><em>Forbes </em>calculates.</a></li></ul>



<ul><li>Musk owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes has discounted his stake to take the loans into account.</li></ul>



<p><strong>KEY BACKGROUND: </strong></p>



<p>Musk first debuted on Forbes’ 400 Wealthiest Americans List in 2012 in 190th place with a net worth of $2.4 billion. On January 1 this year, he was the 37th richest person on earth. However, Tesla&#8217;s sudden and spectacular rise has propelled him near the very top of the world&#8217;s wealthiest humans. Tesla&#8217;s surge has confounded some investors, considering it’s far smaller than its competitors and only recently began to log quarterly profits. Tesla produced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">103,000 vehicles</a>&nbsp;in the first quarter; Toyota produced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds-most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/#64a2c1d05334">2.4 million vehicles</a>&nbsp;during that same period. In 2019, American automakers General Motors and Ford generated&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danrunkevicius/2020/07/20/tesla-stock-may-be-rallying-for-this-absurd-reasonand-this-wont-end-well/#794f313f67a6">ten times</a>&nbsp;more sales than Tesla. Late last month, analysts from Morgan Stanley warned that Tesla stock, which was trading at roughly $1,000 per share at that time, was &#8220;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/23/tesla-is-overvalued-investors-are-treating-it-too-much-like-a-tech-company-says-morgan-stanley/#15e075f96c74">grossly overvalued</a>&nbsp;and set to plunge.&#8221; Earlier this month, Musk said that Tesla would produce virtually fully autonomous&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-musk-tesla-will-have-level-5-self-driving-cars-this-year/#1942918a2d1d">self-driving vehicles</a>&nbsp;by the end of 2020, a claim that was met with skepticism by an auto industry accustomed to a heaping of hype from Musk on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/tesla-autopilot-germany.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">capabilities of self-driving technology</a>. Musk has not sold shares of Tesla&nbsp;<a href="http://sites/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">since 2010</a>.</p>



<p><strong>CRITICAL QUOTES:</strong></p>



<p>&#8220;I really couldn&#8217;t care less,&#8221; Musk emailed Forbes about his net worth earlier this month. &#8220;These numbers rise and fall, but what really matters is making great products that people love.&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;Moves like we are seeing in Microsoft and Tesla and Amazon are truly insane and unlike any i have ever seen in my life,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jimcramer/status/1285293615019888640?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>&nbsp;analyst Jim Cramer on Monday afternoon. When asked if Tesla was a &#8216;Covid Stock,&#8217; Cramer&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jimcramer/status/1285310934114861057?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">replied</a>, &#8220;i don&#8217;t even know if it is a stock. it is something else entirely, like a new species discovered in the wild.&#8221;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>TANGENT:</strong></p>



<p>When Kanye West<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/07/08/kanye-west-says-hes-done-with-trump-opens-up-about-white-house-bid-damaging-biden-and-everything-in-between/#4597b0a647aa"> initially announced</a> that he was running for president, he said he had the &#8220;full support&#8221; of Musk, a longtime close friend. In a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/11/elon-musk-backpedals-on-support-of-kanye-wests-presidential-bid/" target="_blank">since-deleted tweet</a>, Musk responded, &#8220;We may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.&#8221; However, Musk later told <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/13/elon-musk-on-why-hes-still-backing-kanye-west-for-president/" target="_blank">Page Six</a>, &#8220;Kanye explained afterward some of the reasoning behind why he said what he said. It makes more sense than many people, including me, realized.&#8221; On July Fourth, Musk <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://pagesix.com/2020/07/13/elon-musk-on-why-hes-still-backing-kanye-west-for-president/" target="_blank">tweeted</a>, &#8220;You have my full support!&#8221;</p>



<p><em>&#8211;  <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/">Tommy Beer</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a> </em></p>


Tag: Billionaire

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