A surge driven by Google’s latest AI breakthrough
Google co-founder Larry Page has entered the top tier of global wealth once again. His net worth climbed to 246.2 billion dollars, placing him ahead of Jeff Bezos, whose wealth stands at 233.5 billion dollars, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. The jump follows the launch of Google’s Gemini 3 artificial intelligence model, a release that reshaped both markets and the broader tech landscape.
The moment has reignited interest in Page’s trajectory, from a childhood surrounded by computers to the research that ultimately shaped one of the world’s most influential technology companies.
Early environment built around technology
Born in 1973 in Lansing, Michigan, Page grew up in a household where computing was part of daily life. His father was a computer science professor and his mother taught programming, creating an environment filled with manuals, devices and technical books. Page has often described taking machines apart simply to understand them, a habit that formed the core of his engineering mindset.
Music also played a role in his upbringing. He learned several instruments and later said that musical discipline influenced his approach to rhythm and efficiency in computing.
Engineering foundations and early experiments
After attending Okemos Montessori School and East Lansing High School, Page studied engineering at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1991. His projects reflected an early fascination with systems: he built an inkjet printer using Lego, joined the solar car team and proposed a monorail concept to improve campus transport. Each experiment explored how systems could move faster and operate more efficiently.
Stanford years and the birth of PageRank
Page continued his studies at Stanford University, pursuing a master’s degree and then entering the PhD programme. While searching for a research topic, he became interested in mapping the structure of the internet. Links between websites, he reasoned, could reveal which pages carried the most importance.
This idea became the basis for PageRank, an algorithm developed with fellow graduate student and future Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The algorithm ranked pages by analysing their connections, forming the foundation of a search engine that would later become Google in 1998.
Leadership across Google’s evolution
Page served as Google’s first CEO from 1997 to 2001, returned to the role in 2011 and became the first chief executive of Alphabet when the company restructured in 2015. Though he stepped back from day-to-day duties in 2019, he remains a board member, employee and controlling shareholder.
Throughout these years, his focus remained steady: building systems that scale, improving speed and reducing friction in how people access information globally.
Wealth surge tied to long-term influence
Page’s rise in the wealth rankings is more than a financial development. It underscores how the principles behind his early research continue to shape Google’s infrastructure and its newest AI models. Gemini 3, like earlier advances, builds on decades of work rooted in PageRank and the computational challenges he pursued at Stanford.
The updated rankings place Page among the world’s richest individuals, yet the story behind the ascent stretches back decades to a home filled with computers, a series of ambitious engineering projects and doctoral research that eventually transformed the internet.
