American billionaire Michael Dell loses over $20 billion, slips to world's fifth-richest

American billionaire Michael Dell lost more than $20 billion on Wednesday as shares of Dell Technologies Inc. fell sharply after an analyst downgrade, knocking the company's founder down to fifth place among the world's richest people, according to Forbes.

Dell's fortune stood at $256.6 billion after the decline, Forbes estimated. He had been the world's fourth-richest person.

The drop came after Barclays cut its rating on Dell Technologies to equal-weight from overweight before U.S. markets opened. The shares were down 11.1% shortly before the close, their biggest intraday fall since July, Forbes reported.

Dell owns about 40% of the Texas-based computer maker, which he started in 1984 as a student at the University of Texas at Austin, so moves in its share price account for most of the swings in his net worth.

Brin moves ahead

Google co-founder Sergey Brin passed Dell to take fourth place with a net worth of $262.3 billion, even though Brin himself lost about $4 billion as shares of Alphabet Inc. fell, according to Forbes. Meta Platforms Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, worth $253.1 billion, sits just behind Dell in sixth place.

Less than $10 billion separates the three men.

The selloff was not confined to Dell. U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday after Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed inflation running ahead of economists' estimates. The S&P 500 was down 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite 1.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.2% shortly before the close, Forbes said.

An AI-driven climb

Wednesday's loss follows a steep climb. Dell was worth $97.7 billion when Forbes published its 2025 Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans, the publication said. His fortune has grown by more than $157 billion since then.

Last month his net worth briefly topped $270 billion, making him the world's second-richest person behind Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla.

Much of that gain has come from demand for the servers and data center equipment that Dell Technologies sells to companies building artificial intelligence systems, according to Forbes. The stock has risen as AI developers and cloud providers race to add computing capacity, which has also left it exposed to sharp moves when analysts turn cautious.

Dell's family office, DFO Management, which invests his fortune, separately disclosed this week that a fund it is linked to will buy a 1.34% stake in South Korea's SK Inc. for about $406 million.

Dell, 61, is chairman and chief executive of Dell Technologies and has led the company for most of its four decades. He took it private in 2013 in a deal with Silver Lake and returned it to the public market in 2018.