Facebook Founder Makes Forbes List of Top 20 Billionaires

Tech titans once again dominated the list of Californians on the annual Forbes List of Billionaires. Coming in at No. 17 is Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman and CEO of Menlo Park-based Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s wealth on March 3, 2015 is $34.6 billion. Forbes noted that Facebook’s revenue in 2014 rose to $12.5 billion, “Some 1.4 billion people around the globe are on Facebook, and those users are watching 3 billion videos a day on the site. Its Instagram unit has more than 300 million users, while mobile messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $19 billion in cash and stock in 2014, has 700 million users and is growing. Zuckerberg is aiming to turn virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR, for which it paid $2 billion in 2014, into a next generation computing platform.”

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Silicon Valley Tech Titans who made the Top 20:

5. Larry Ellison

16. Mark Zuckerberg

19. Larry Page

20. Sergey Brin

The magazine says there are now 1,826 billionaires worldwide with a combined net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion a year ago.

There aren’t any surprises at the top of the Americans on the billionaire heap: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison are the leaders.

Forbes, which has been compiling the list since 1986, says the rankings show entrepreneurship is alive and well: 1,191 members of the list are self-made billionaires, while only 230 inherited their fortunes.

--Deb Belt (Patch Staff) contributed to this story