Indian tycoon Gautam Adani has climbed the wealth rankings at breakneck speed this year, having surpassed Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, to become the world’s second-richest person.

Adani’s fortune is up more than anyone else’s in 2022, while US tech stocks like Amazon sink. Adani, who started the year as No. 14 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, now has a US$146.8 billion fortune that lags behind only Elon Musk’s $263.9 billion.

Bloomberg reports that shares in Adani’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. surged to a record this week, and some of his group companies have climbed more than 1,000 per cent since 2020. Bezos trails Adani by just US$19 million as a renewed tech selloff Friday again hammered the fortunes of the richest Americans.

The shift in the wealth rankings could be fleeting and depends largely on shares of Amazon.com Inc., which are down 26 per cent this year. According to Bloomberg, “Adani first overtook India’s Mukesh Ambani as the richest Asian person in February, became a centibillionaire in April and surpassed Bill Gates and France’s, Bernard Arnault in the past two months.”

First Asian featured so highly in global wealth index

Bloomberg explains that “this is the first time someone from Asia has featured this highly in the top echelons of the wealth index, which has been dominated by US tech entrepreneurs.”