Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Ellison (born August 17, 1944 in The Bronx, New York City, New York) is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, one of the world's leading enterprise software companies. As of 2012, he is the third wealthiest American citizen, with an estimated worth of $36.5 billion. The bulk of Ellison's fortune comes from his 22.5 percent stake in Oracle.

Larry Ellison was born in the Bronx, New York City, New York to Florence Spellman, an unwed 19-year-old of Jewish heritage and an Italian-American U.S. Air Force pilot, who was stationed abroad before Spellman realized that she had become pregnant by him. After Larry Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother determined that she was unable to care for him adequately, and arranged for him to be adopted by her aunt and uncle in Chicago. Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison adopted him when he was nine months old. Lillian was the second wife of Louis Ellison, an immigrant who had arrived in the United States in 1905 from Russia. Larry Ellison did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.

The World's Billionaires list is a yearly ranking of the world’s richest people. Forbes evaluates billionaires stakes in public and private companies, their real estate, yachts, planes, car collections, art, jewelry and other assets. Forbes also factors in debt.

The internet bubble created the most paper wealth for some billionaires. However, once the dotcom bubble burst the new rich saw their fortunes disappear. Billionaires' fortunes have been hit even harder by the global financial crisis. 2009 was the first time in five years that the world had a net loss in the number of billionaires. The strong performance of the financial markets and global economic recovery have erased financial assets losses. Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past few years.

Source: Forbes Magazine.