PANews reported on December 31 that, according to foreign media reports, an institutional billionaire index shows that the collective wealth of the world's 500 richest people increased by a record $2.2 trillion this year. The booming market across all sectors, from stocks to cryptocurrencies to precious metals, led to a surge in their asset values, bringing their total net worth to $11.9 trillion. Tech giants led the gains, with the fervor for artificial intelligence continuing to boost large-cap US stocks. About a quarter of all the wealth growth recorded by the institutional wealth index came from eight individuals, including Oracle (ORCL.N) Chairman Larry Ellison, Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet (GOOG.O) co-founder Larry Page, and Amazon (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos. However, it's worth noting that this is a smaller contribution than last year, when these eight billionaires accounted for 43% of the total gains.