Michael Dell is absolutely crushing it this year

• Old-school tech founder Michael Dell is shaking up the wealth rankings.
• The Dell Technologies chief is now richer than Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison.
• Dell stock has tripled this year on the back of soaring sales of AI computing equipment.

Dell computers might not be flashy, but there's nothing dull about Michael Dell right now.

The founder and CEO of Dell Technologies is proving that tech fortunes don't have to be fleeting. Thirty years after he first became a billionaire, Dell is now the fifth-wealthiest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The personal-computing pioneer has leapfrogged Warren Buffett, Jensen Huang, Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison on the rich list this year.

His net worth has surged by around $77 billion since the start of January; only Elon Musk has gained more in that timeframe.

Dell's $216 billion net worth as of Thursday's close makes him one of six people with a $200 billion-plus fortune, along with Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Ellison.

His wealth surge has been fueled by a 225% jump in his company's stock price this year, which has raised its market value to $281 billion — more than Wells Fargo, Palantir, or IBM are worth.

Dell owns about 41% of the eponymous PC maker, which has tapped into the AI boom by selling a "full stack" of computing infrastructure to run AI models, including workstations, servers, storage, networking, and services.

Strong customer demand was evident in Dell's first-quarter earnings. Net revenue soared 88% from the same quarter last year to a record $44 billion, as net sales of AI-optimized servers rocketed 757% to over $16 billion. Operating income more than tripled to $3.7 billion.

Dell isn't the only tech titan to see his fortune balloon in 2026. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has added more than $300 billion to his net worth and even briefly became a trillionaire after SpaceX went public earlier this month.

Page and Brin, the cofounders of Google-parent Alphabet and the world's second- and third-richest people, are up more than $23 billion each thanks to their company's climbing stock price.

Other centibillionaires have fared much worse. Ellison, Zuckerberg, Ballmer, and Arnault have seen roughly $40 billion wiped off each of their fortunes as investors have soured on some tech and luxury names.