Apple's CEO Tim Cook Becomes Billionaire As Share Price Soars

Strong quarterly results and general positive outlook on tech giants have driven Apple Inc's market value to more than $1.9 trillion. In fact, last week, the iPhone market surpassed Saudi Aramco to become the most valuable publicly listed company in the world.

Apple is more valuable than ever and so is its chief executive officer (CEO) Tim Cook, who after nine years of taking over after Steve Jobs, has become a billionaire.

When co-founder Steve Jobs died, the company was valued at $350 billion. Now that Apple is worth nearly $2 trillion, Cook's net worth has eclipsed $1 billion as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index's calculations, which are based on an analysis of regulatory filings and applying the market performance of a typical wealthy investor to his proceeds from share sales.

Cook, 59, is has joined one of the most elite clubs for CEOs who didn't actually found the companies they run.

In 2015, he has said that he has plans to give away most of his fortune and has already gifted away millions of dollars worth of Apple shares. This could mean that his wealth may be less than $1 billion if he has made other undisclosed charity.

Rise of the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stocks amid the pandemic has increased the net worth of big tech CEOs. Facebook's co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently became a centri-billionaire and joined Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's Bill Gates as the only three people in the world to hold wealth exceeding $100 billion.

While Bezos and Zuckerberg have huge stakes in the companies they founded, Cook's path to the billionaire-club was more incremental. A majority of his estimated wealth comes from equity awards he's received since joining Apple in 1998.