Michael Dell passes Jeff Bezos to become world's third-richest person

Michael Dell passes Jeff Bezos to become world's third-richest person

Wed, September 9, 2026 at 4:08 PM GMT+3 2 min read

Michael Dell surpassed Jeff Bezos in Forbes' billionaire rankings on Tuesday, reaching the third spot on the wealth list for the first time as Dell Technologies stock closed at a record high.

By Tuesday's closing bell, Dell's fortune had grown by $4.6 billion to an estimated $267.7 billion, according to Forbes. Dell Technologies stock rose 1.9% to close at $533.88, touching an intraday high of $538.47. Bezos' net worth fell $1.4 billion to $265.2 billion as Amazon stock slipped 0.6%. Dell now trails only Alphabet co-founder Larry Page, worth an estimated $277.9 billion, and Tesla chief Elon Musk at $942 billion.

Dell Technologies stock has surged 327% year-to-date, opening the period at roughly $128 per share. Michael Dell holds roughly a 40% stake in the company and has significant holdings in DFO Management, his private investment firm. That wealth growth, which has more than doubled his net worth over the past year, lifted him above Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison on the rankings in recent months, according to Forbes.

The stock surge has been driven by booming demand for artificial intelligence hardware. In last week's second-quarter earnings report, Dell Technologies posted record quarterly revenue of $47 billion, a 58% year-over-year jump, alongside adjusted earnings per share of $7.04 — more than triple the figure from twelve months prior. The AI-optimized server segment generated $16.4 billion in revenue for the quarter, twice the prior-year total, while new orders hit a record $60.9 billion. The company ended the quarter with a backlog of $95 billion in AI servers.

On the strength of those results, Dell Technologies raised its full-year revenue guidance by $25 billion to $192 billion, with $74 billion expected from AI-optimized server sales. Full-year adjusted EPS guidance was lifted to $25.50 from a prior forecast of $17.90. "Our advantages reinforce one another, and throughout the quarter we used these strengths to drive growth, share gains, profitability, and cash generation," CFO David Kennedy said in a statement.

Dell Technologies has been expanding its AI product lineup beyond servers. The company introduced an on-premises AI agent product built on Nvidia software aimed at giving enterprises an alternative to running AI workloads in the cloud, a market it has been targeting as agentic AI costs increase for enterprise buyers.