Topline

Google co-founder Sergey Brin rose to become the fourth richest person in the world Friday morning, after falling into fifth place Thursday thanks to a massive slump in Alphabet stock driven by concerns over the company’s projected spending on artificial intelligence.

Key Facts

Brin’s net worth plummeted more than $17 million on Thursday after Alphabet’s share price dropped more than 7%—erasing roughly $255 billion in market value in the largest one-day valuation loss in the company’s history.

The drop briefly put Brin, who was the third richest person in the world before the change in Alphabet’s share price, in fifth place on Forbes’ real-time billionaires list behind Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos.

As of Friday morning, however, Brin’s net worth sat at $241.8 billion and Dell’s had fallen to $239.8 billion after a small drop in Dell stock, of which its namesake founder owns roughly 40%.

Dell's net worth has surged tens of billions of dollars this year thanks to Dell Technologies’ rapid growth in artificial intelligence infrastructure and soaring demand for AI servers.

BIG NUMBER

362.7 million. That’s how many shares, or about 3% of the company, Brin owns in Alphabet.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

The opening bell. Alphabet appears poised for a modest rebound Friday morning, but investors are likely still cautious after Thursday’s steep sell off, which came after Alphabet’s post-market earnings release Wednesday. Alphabet reported its 12th straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth, but investors were spooked by a spike in its artificial intelligence capital spending forecast to be between $195 billion and $205 billion.

Key background

Tiny moves in stock like Alphabet or Dell can swap two people on the Forbes real-time billionaire ranking whose fortunes are only a few billion dollars apart. The biggest driver is the real-time market value of shares a billionaire owns in public companies. As stocks rise and fall throughout the day, Forbes automatically recalculates their wealth. Forbes also estimates the value of private companies using comparable public companies and other assets, like real estate, cash, investments, yachts and art.