According to Bloomberg's billionaire rankings, in 2024, Steve Ballmer's fortune increased by about $24 billion to $154 billion, putting him in seventh place. Now, he is only $3 billion behind Gates - in sixth place with $157 billion - compared to $17 billion in the summer of 2023.

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Steve Ballmer (right) and Bill Gates at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting on November 14, 2006. At that time, Ballmer was CEO and Gates was Chairman of Microsoft. Photo: Bloomberg

Ballmer is richer than many famous billionaires including Oracle's Larry Ellison ($153 billion), Alphabet's Sergey Brin ($148 billion), Warren Buffett ($135 billion), Michael Dell ($120 billion) and Nvidia's Jensen Huang ($115 billion).

He joined Microsoft in 1980 as an assistant to the president, having previously been a business manager. He initially negotiated a base salary of $50,000 plus 10% of any profit growth he generated, but when the profit margin became too much, he agreed to swap it for a large amount of equity, according to Forbes.

Gates' trusted adviser rose to become CEO of Microsoft in 2000. According to regulatory filings, he retired in 2014 with 333 million shares, equivalent to 4% of the shares.

Bloomberg assumes he kept most of those shares, which would have been worth more than $150 billion based on Microsoft's share price. He's also likely collected billions in dividends over the years.

Ballmer’s fortune has soared in the past year, largely due to the artificial intelligence boom that has boosted Microsoft’s stock price. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot, is expected to help the Windows maker surpass Google in Internet search.

Ballmer's wealth is very different from the 10 richest people on Bloomberg's list, according to Insider. Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos and the rest got rich from stakes in companies they founded or still run, while Ballmer is not the founder or current CEO of Microsoft.

If Ballmer surpasses Gates, who has donated large sums to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities, it would be a truly rare case of an employee becoming richer than his boss.

(According to Insider)