World’s Billionaires List: Facts And Figures

Today on Forbes, world's billionaires list, facts and figures. Never before have billionaires so thoroughly dominated the world, driving politics, policies, equity markets, and AI hysteria, which has, in turn, propelled the planet's richest people to heights hard to imagine even just a few years ago. A record 3,428 entrepreneurs, investors, and heirs make this year's world's billionaires list, which was released Tuesday. That's 400 more billionaires this year than in 2025. Put another way, the planet added more than one new billionaire every day over the past 12 months. Even more astonishing is the money. As a group, the billionaire class is $4 trillion richer than last year. That bears repeating. The world's billionaires are collectively $4 trillion richer than last year. Their combined wealth now stands at a record $20.1 trillion. The average billionaire's fortune is now $5.8 billion, up from $5.3 billion in 2025. Forbes used stock prices and exchange rates from March 1st, 2026, for this year's list. Nowhere is that dominance stronger than in the U.S., where the country is governed by a president who is a billionaire and where 15 of the 20 richest people on Earth reside. That includes the wealthiest of all, Elon Musk, whose grip on the top spot is as strong as it's ever been. Over the past year, Musk has raced through a series of milestones as Tesla stock has climbed and he's maneuvered SpaceX through a series of deals at increasingly lofty valuations. Musk became the first person to hit $500 billion in wealth in October, then $600 billion and $700 billion within four days in December, then $800 billion in February. All told, Musk is an estimated $497 billion richer than he was a year ago. He tops this year's list with a record $839 billion fortune, putting him closer to becoming a trillionaire than losing the title of world's richest person. He's more than three times richer than his closest competitors, world number two Larry Page, worth an estimated $257 billion, and world number three, Page's Google co-founder Sergey Brin, $237 billion net worth, who themselves are a combined $212 billion richer than last year and higher in the ranks than ever before, climbing past Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Oracle's Larry Ellison and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. A record 20 people are now in the so-called $100 billion club. The ultra elite group of billionaires whose fortunes span 12 figures, up from 15 people last year. Nearly half of these centibillionaires got rich in tech. Among the five new faces to hit a dozen digits, crypto kingpin Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, who has emerged from a four-month prison sentence in 2024 with both extensive business ties with and a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. CZ, who is worth an estimated $110 billion, is now richer than Bill Gates. Trump, meanwhile, is an estimated $1.4 billion richer this year, thanks mainly to raking in crypto profits during his first year back in office and his half-billion dollar New York civil fraud judgment being thrown out. He ranks 645th, up from 700th a year ago, with an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion. In one of the best years for billionaire wealth creation ever, 390 newcomers make the list for the first time. Hip-hop legend Dr. Dre, pop star Beyonce Knowles-Carter and tennis great Roger Federer join a growing list of celebrity billionaires. Other notable new names include Greg Abel, who succeeded Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway in January, and Kimball Musk, Elon's younger brother. Then there are the AI billionaires. At least 86 members of the Three Comma Club owe their fortunes in a major way to artificial intelligence. Nearly half of them, 42 in all, became a billionaire in the past 12 months, including the moguls behind Perplexity, Mercore, Mistral, Cursor, Lovable, Sierra, Harness, Cognition and Surge. That latter company's 38-year-old founder, Edwin Chen, is the list's richest newcomer, worth an estimated $18 billion. The rise of AI is creating new fortunes faster than any technology that has come before it. There are now a record 35 billionaires under the age of 30. That includes a new youngest self-made billionaire, 22-year-old Surya Meera, who is a couple months younger than his two co-founders of AI recruiting startup Mercore, which private investors valued at $10 billion last fall. Meera and his co-founders are the youngest self-made billionaires ever to make Forbes' World's Billionaires list, besting Mark Zuckerberg, who debuted at age 23 nearly two decades ago. There's also a new youngest self-made woman billionaire, Luana Lopes Lara, a 29-year-old former ballerina and MIT grad from Brazil who co-founded prediction market firm Kalshi. In all, 17 of the 35 under-30 billionaires are new to the list this year. For full coverage and to see the whole list, check out Chase Peterson Withorn's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.