The richest tech tycoons in 14 major countries around the world

Net worth: $5.3 billion

Background: Calgary native Garrett Camp cofounded StumbleUpon in 2002, when he was still a graduate student. After selling the company to eBay for $75 million in 2007, he went on to start Uber with Travis Kalanick. Uber was most recently valued at more than $50 billion.

Net worth: $25.3 billion

Background: Jack Ma is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company whose $25 billion IPO set a record for the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. He grew up poor in communist China, failed his college entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC.

Net worth: $9.5 billion

Background: Hasso Plattner joined four former IBM colleagues to found German software company SAP in 1972. In 2013, he signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give at least half of his wealth to charity. Plattner owns a superyacht called "Morning Glory" as well as a luxury golf course in South Africa.

Net worth: $16 billion

Background: Azim Premji is the chairman of Wipro, an IT consulting and software company based in Bangalore. Premji is the wealthiest tech tycoon in India, but he also happens to be the biggest philanthropist in all of Asia, having given away $4.4 billion worth of Wipro shares.

Net worth: $3 billion

Background: Shaul Shani, a secretive billionaire who does not allow pictures of himself on the internet, made $1.4 billion when he sold Global Village Telecom to Vivendi for $4.5 billion in 2009. He is also the founder of Oshap Technologies, which went public in 1985, as well as Sapiens and Tecnomatix.

Net worth: $9 billion

Background: Hiroshi Mikitani is the CEO and chairman of Rakuten, Japan's largest e-commerce site. He's made several gutsy moves in the past few years, including buying Ebates for $1 billion in September 2014 and investing $300 million in Lyft this March.

Net worth: $1.3 billion

Background: Goh Peng Ooi founded Silverlake Axis, a financial services software company, after spending nearly a decade at IBM in the United States. Silverlake is now the top banking software provider in Malaysia, and Goh is the country's first tech billionaire.

Net worth: $1.04 billion

Background: Eugene Kasperksy is the founder of Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity firm that helps protect the data of approximately 300 million people across the globe. He has written extensively and often speaks at security conferences.

Net worth: $3 billion

Background: Jason Chang is the chairman of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, the largest semiconductor-packaging company in the world. Though he was born in Singapore, he currently lives in Taiwan and has made significant real estate investments in China.

Net worth: $2.3 billion

Background: Kim Beom-Su created messaging service KakaoTalk in March 2010. In October 2014, KakaoTalk merged with Daum Communications. When the newly formed Daum Kakao Corp. premiered on the Korean Stock Exchange, it was valued at $9.5 billion. Kim owns 40% of the company.

Net worth: $6.7 billion

Background: Terry Gou is the chairman and founder of Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that manufactures electronics for tech companies like Apple. Foxconn is one of the largest private employers in China and one of the largest supply chain manufacturers in the world.

Net worth: $1.01 billion

Background: Though the deal is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, Michael Lynch became a billionaire when his software company Autonomy was purchased by Hewlett-Packard in 2011. HP has since sued Autonomy for $5.1 billion over alleged accounting fraud. Lynch currently leads a British venture capital firm called Invoke Capital.

Net worth: $79.3 billion

Background: Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has topped Forbes' list of the wealthiest people in the world for 16 of the last 21 years. He's spent the last few years focusing on philanthropic work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has convinced more than 100 of the world's wealthiest people to donate at least half of their fortune as part of the Giving Pledge.

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