The world’s 500 richest people earned an additional $852 billion in the first half of 2023, with billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg nearly doubling their fortunes.

This is the best half-year for the world’s billionaires since the second half of 2020, as the global economy recovers from the COVID-19 recession.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the world’s 500 richest people, recently released, each member of the list earned an average of $14 million per day in the past 6 months.

The gains coincided with a broad stock market rally and investors shrugged off the impact of central bank rate hikes, the war in Ukraine and the regional banking crisis.

Investors’ enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) has boosted  tech stocks . The S&P 500 is up 16% (the S&P 500 is a stock index based on the capitalization of the 500 largest U.S. companies) and the Nasdaq 100 (which includes the 100 largest and most innovative non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock market) is up 39% in the first half of this year.

Billionaire Musk, the world’s richest person, added $96.6 billion to his net worth as of June 30. Meanwhile, billionaire Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, added $58.9 billion.

In contrast, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s net worth fell the most in a six-month period, losing $60.2 billion.

Billionaire Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, also posted the biggest one-day loss of any billionaire. Mr. Adani lost about $20.8 billion on January 27, after short seller Hindenburg Research accused his group of accounting fraud and stock manipulation — allegations Adani denies.

Billionaire Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises LP suffered its biggest one-day drop after being accused of shorting the stock. Icahn’s net worth fell $13.4 billion, or 57%, the biggest percentage drop of any index member over the period.