Together, the billionaires at the top of the Forbes list are worth a total of $1.56 trillion
Billionaire Elon Musk lost his title as the world’s richest person in January as shares of his electric car maker fell and a judge in Delaware voided his $51 billion compensation package, prompting Forbes to discount the value of your fortune.
Despite this, he is still in second place in the billionaire rankings and has seen his fortune surpass US$200 billion in recent days, closing the gap between him and luxury goods billionaire Bernard Arnault , from France. Arnault had a very good month, adding $19 billion to his net worth, but not as good as Musk, whose fortune increased by $27 billion.
However, neither surpassed Mark Zuckerberg , whose fortune increased by almost $35 billion in the period — the biggest gain among the top 10 richest — thanks to a big jump in Meta’s share price. That was enough to take Zuckerberg to 4th place in the world, up from 5th place in February, swapping positions with Oracle’s Larry Ellison.
Nine of the 10 richest people in the world are richer than they were a month ago. Together, they are worth a total of $1.56 trillion, $115 billion more than a month ago.
Here are the 10 richest people in the world as of March
1. Bernard Arnault and family
Net worth: $209.4 billion
Source of Wealth: LVMH Age: 75
Citizenship: France
Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of LVMH, returned to the top of the list on January 31, 2024, surpassing Elon Musk, and he has maintained that position ever since. Arnault built the world’s largest luxury goods company with around 70 fashion and cosmetics brands. Among the most notable: Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Moet & Chandon and Sephora. In January 2021, LVMH acquired jewelry company Tiffany & Co. for US$15.8 billion.
Arnault’s father made millions in the construction business; For starters, Arnault used $15 million of that fortune to buy Christian Dior.
All five of Arnault’s children work in parts of the LVMH empire. In January 2023, Arnault appointed his daughter Delphine to head Dior, the group’s second largest brand. He also appointed two of his sons, Alexandre, 31, and Frédéric, 29, to the LVMH Board.
Arnault was the richest person in the world for most of the first half of 2023; he fell to second place on June 8, 2023. As of January 1, 2024, Arnault was worth $9.4 billion more than he was a month ago, according to Forbes estimates, following a surge in his stock price from LVMH.
2. Elon Musk
Net worth: $199.6 billion
Source of Wealth: Tesla, SpaceX, X
Age: 52
Citizenship: USA
Musk is CEO of electric car company Tesla, rocket company SpaceX and social media company X, formerly known as Twitter. He owns 13% of Tesla between shares and options and gave some of the shares as collateral for loans. The automaker is responsible for around two-thirds of his fortune. He bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022 and owns about 74% of the social media company, which is now worth less than half of what he paid for it.
Originally from South Africa, Musk moved to Canada before turning 18, worked several jobs, enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario, and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in Economics .
In 2000, he merged an online bank he founded, X.com, with a similar company founded by Peter Thiel to form PayPal, which eBay bought in 2002 for $1.4 billion. He founded SpaceX in 2002 in El Segundo, near Los Angeles. In 2004 he joined Tesla as an investor and president, a year after its founding; he was later given the title of co-founder. Musk, who became CEO of Tesla in 2008, took the company public in 2010. Its market capitalization soared in 2020 and 2021. In September 2021, Musk became the richest person in the world. As of November 2021, his fortune has reached a staggering $320 billion. He maintained his position as the world’s richest for most of 2022 — until December 2022, when a drop in Tesla’s share price dropped the value of his fortune.
After falling in the Forbes rankings, Musk once again became the richest person in the world on June 8, 2023 and maintained the top spot until the end of 2023. Musk’s fortune increased by about $6 billion in December, driven by a 4% increase in Tesla’s share price.
3. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $193.3 billion
Source of Wealth: Amazon
Age: 60
Citizenship: USA
Jeff Bezos created e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 and ran it as CEO until July 2021 (he remains chairman); that same month, he went to space in a rocket built by the private rocket company Blue Origin, which he founded and financed with billions of dollars. His fortune grew by about $3 billion in March as a result of a surge in Amazon shares.
Before founding Amazon.com in his Seattle garage, Bezos worked in New York at hedge fund DE Shaw. Amazon began as an online bookstore at a time when few people purchased products online. The company also grew to dominate cloud storage and began producing films and series to power Amazon Prime Video.
Bezos surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world in July 2017. He and Gates swapped the first and second richest places a few times. Bezos was the richest person in the world on Forbes’ list of global billionaires from 2018 to 2021; he fell to second place in 2022. Then to fourth richest place, but returned to third place on January 25, 2023, when the fortune of Indian Gautam Adani (previously the third richest) fell.
In 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced; as part of the deal, she got 4% of Amazon’s shares and he got 12%. He has since sold and donated part of his stake and currently owns just under 10% of the company. Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes estimates that it has sold more than $27 billion in shares. Through his Bezos Expeditions, he has invested in a number of companies, including Airbnb and software company Workday.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $151.2 billion
Source of Wealth: Facebook
Age: 39
Citizenship: USA
Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook – now called Meta Platforms – when he was a student at Harvard University in 2004. It became the largest social network in the world, with 3.88 billion monthly users. The company also has Instagram and WhatsApp, both acquired and expanded. Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, took the company public in 2012 and still owns around 13% of it. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have committed to directing 99% of their shares in the company to “measures that promote human potential”. One ambitious goal they are funding is the development of tools to help others cure, manage or prevent disease by the end of this century.
Zuckerberg rejoined the world’s 10 richest in the summer of 2023, for the first time since January 2022, as a result of a rise in Meta’s share price. During the month of April, his fortune fell by US$19 billion, but he maintained fourth place on the list.
5. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $142.8 billion
Source of Wealth: Oracle
Age: 79
Citizenship: USA
Larry Ellison co-founded the software company Oracle in 1977 and was CEO until 2014; he now serves as president and chief technology officer. Over the years, Oracle has made a series of major acquisitions, including purchasing Sun Microsystems in 2010 for $7.4 billion.
In 2012, Ellison purchased 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. He moved to Lanai from California in 2020, but has maintained his homes in California and Nevada. Ellison invested in Tesla and served on the automaker’s board from 2018 to August 2022.
In February this year, Ellison was surpassed by Mark Zuckerberg and fell to fifth place on the list. In April, his net worth shrank by $13 billion.
6. Larry Page
Net worth: $135.4 billion
Source of Wealth: Google
Age: 51
Citizenship: USA
Page founded the search engine Google in 1998 with Sergey Brin, his Stanford PhD colleague. Page served as CEO of the company until 2001 and in the period between 2011 and 2015. Although they remain among the largest shareholders, Brin and Page have been away from the day-to-day running of the company for five years and are members of the board of Alphabet, which controls the Google. After selling $2.5 billion (pre-tax) from mid-2021 to mid-2022, Page hasn’t sold a share since. He had been staying out of the public eye, spending time on his five private islands (including one in Fiji and one in Puerto Rico) until late last year, when he was listed as a “key contributor” to changes to Google’s chatbot, the Gemini AI.
Page is one of the largest donors to Parkinson’s disease research, having donated $1.25 billion to various research groups.
7. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $131 billion
Source of Wealth: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 93
Citizenship: USA
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha”, Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. He runs investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including insurance company Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen. The son of a US congressman, he first bought stocks at age 11 and first filed taxes at 13.
Buffett created the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2010, asking billionaires to pledge to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. Buffett said he would give away 99% of his fortune. So far, he has donated at least $51.5 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and his children’s foundations. This makes him the most generous billionaire on the planet. In mid-June, Buffett donated $4.6 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock. In April, his fortune declined by about $8 billion due to a drop in Berkshire Hathaway shares.
8. Bill Gates
Net worth: $127 billion
Source of Wealth: Microsoft
Age: 68
Citizenship: USA
As a teenager, Gates fell in love with computer programming. He dropped out of Harvard to found the software company Microsoft with his high school friend Paul Allen in 1975, creating one of the first software programs available for the nascent personal computer industry. He was CEO of the company for 25 years and remained president until 2014. He finally stepped down from the board in 2020, but told Forbes in early 2023 that he still spends about 10% of his time consulting with Microsoft teams. He currently has investments in dozens of companies, including waste removal company Republic Services and farm equipment maker Deere & Co., and is one of the largest owners of farmland in the US.
Forbes first listed Gates as a billionaire in 1987; he was the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2017 (except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013).
Largely due to the $59 billion he donated to the Gates Foundation (including a $20 billion donation in July 2021), he was surpassed as the world’s richest person in 2018 by Jeff Bezos. He and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021; she received about $10 billion in stocks and other assets as part of the divorce settlement.
Gates’ fortune fell by $4 billion in April and he dropped from 7th to 9th on the list. It is his lowest position in several decades.
9. Mukesh Ambani
Net worth: $117.8 billion
Source of Wealth: Reliance Industries
Age: 66
Citizenship: India
Mukesh Ambani chairs and heads Reliance Industries, which has a turnover of US$110 billion and interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecommunications, retail and financial services.
Reliance was founded by his late father, Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn merchant, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father’s death in 2002, Ambani and his younger brother Anil divided the family empire.
10. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $117.1 billion
Source of Wealth: Microsoft
Age: 68
Citizenship: USA
Ballmer was a colleague of Bill Gates at Harvard. In 1980, he left Stanford University’s MBA to join Microsoft, where he was the 30th employee. He was CEO of the company between 2000 and 2014.
When he retired from Microsoft, Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team for $2 billion, a record for NBA teams. Forbes currently values the Clippers at $4.65 billion.
Ballmer will move his team to a new stadium this spring. Privately financed, the $2 billion Intuit Dome is near Los Angeles Airport.
As with Bill Gates, Ballmer’s fortune declined last month due to a drop in Microsoft shares. He and his wife Connie are among the 25 most generous philanthropists in the United States.
