What do Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Shawn Fain and Lina Khan have in common? On the surface, it might not seem like much — one is an impetuous tech-bro genius, another is a buy-and-hold nonagenarian investor, and the other two are a tough union boss and a business-busting regulator.
This year’s MarketWatch 50 reflects the fact that the U.S. stock market’s gains in 2023 have largely been driven by a few big tech stocks, often referred to as the magnificent seven. There are nine corporate chiefs on the MarketWatch 50 related to these seven tech behemoths, like Apple AAPL, +1.23% CEO Tim Cook, Amazon AMZN, +3.89% chief Andy Jassy and Meta META, +2.00% Platforms’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Execs revolutionizing AI and weight-loss drugs The chief of chip-maker Nvidia NVDA, +1.63% has long been a legend in Silicon Valley, but in 2023 Huang became a star on Wall Street. His reputation has swelled to new heights, as the boom in generative artificial intelligence requires Nvidia chips, sending the company’s valuation to the lofty trillion-dollar level previously reserved for names like Apple, Microsoft and Google.
The emergence of Open AI’s ChatGPT pushed Google-parent Alphabet GOOGL, +1.87% to combine its two AI-focused entities. DeepMind, which had operated independently since the company acquired it in 2014, merged with Google Brain, a unit that worked within Google on AI development. Now, Demis Hassabis, who founded DeepMind with an eye toward artificial general intelligence, is in control of the combined entity, the signature AI effort at Alphabet.
The short seller companies fear most Nathan Anderson has firmly established himself as the activist short seller who companies fear most. Anderson runs a tiny firm, but has proven himself to be a shrewd stock analyst and effective promoter of his investment bets against the shares of companies. Tesla has been the big bright spot for Musk, with the EV maker starting production of the Cybertruck, its electric pickup truck, after years of delays. Tesla TSLA, -4.79% shares doubled in the first nine months of 2023, and its market capitalization was recently hovering around $700 billion, towering over market values of legacy and startup U.S. carmakers.