Their father, Cyrus Mistry, passed away, less than three months after the death of their grandfather, Pallonji Mistry. This year, the 25 youngest people on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list are all 34 or younger, with a combined net worth of $110 bn. Some built their fortunes through companies like Snap (Evan Spiegel, 34), Gymshark (Ben Francis, 32), and Oculus VR (Palmer Luckey, 32). His father, Fred Koch, improved a method of refining heavy oil into top 100 richest person in world gasoline in 1927 and started the family business in 1940.
Iceland had a billionaire, Thor Bjorgolfsson, in the list after a gap of five years. Guatemala had a billionaire, Mario Lopez Estrada, for the first time in its history. The 39th annual Forbes list of the world’s billionaires found a record 3,028 billionaires with a total net wealth of $16.1 trillion. This represents an increase of 247 members and $1.9 trillion compared to 2024. This year also marked the first time Bill Gates dropped out of the top 10 richest people, which he had been part of for 33 years since the 6th annual Forbes list of the world’s billionaires in 1992.
As head of LVMH, Arnault has shaped trends in luxury fashion, guiding the industry’s shift toward global expansion, digital presence, and sustainability initiatives. His influence extends to hiring top designers and leading groundbreaking collaborations across fashion, art, and technology, which set trends and elevate the profile of luxury brands globally. Mr. Arnault also holds the position of President of the Board of Directors of Groupe Arnault S.E., his family holding company. In 1989, Mr. Arnault became the majority shareholder of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton, establishing it as the world’s leading luxury products group. He restored the group’s profitability by pursuing a strategy to create the world’s leading luxury products company. During this time, he revitalized Christian Dior as the foundation of the new organization.
While he stepped down from an active leadership role in 2019, he remains a major shareholder and board member, shaping the company’s strategic direction. He has shared his views on the technology industry and the future of search on the Charlie Rose Show, CNBC, and CNNfn. Sergey Brin is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019.
It features a profile of each billionaire, and includes a tool that allows users to compare the fortunes of multiple billionaires. In July 2025, Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chairman of Oracle, rose from the fourth to the second-richest person in the world. Brazil’s Livia Voigt, the world’s youngest billionaire at 19, holds a $1.1 bn stake in WEG, a company her late grandfather cofounded. She and her sister, Dora Voigt de Assis, 27, are two of the seven new additions among the youngest billionaires, with 18 being heirs. Several other young billionaires have joined the list in recent years following a parent’s death.
#3 Jeff Bezos
Thomas Peterffy (born September 30, 1944) is a Hungarian-born American billionaire businessman. He is the founder, chairman, and the largest shareholder of Interactive Brokers. Peterffy worked as an architectural draftsman after emigrating to the United States, and later became a computer programmer.
Charles Koch net worth — $74 bn
The September 2025 rankings of the top 10 richest person in the world reflect both continuity and change in the global wealth landscape. Technology continues its reign as the dominant wealth-generating sector, with artificial intelligence emerging as a particularly powerful catalyst for fortune-building. The average age of the top ten wealthiest individuals is 67.7 years, with Warren Buffett being the oldest at 95 and Mark Zuckerberg the youngest at 42. This reflects both the time required to build massive fortunes and the accelerated wealth creation enabled by the technology sector in recent decades. Technology continues to dominate as the primary wealth generator among the world’s richest individuals
SpaceX Valuation Boosts Musk’s Wealth
Huang overtook Spain’s Amancio Ortega, founder of clothing retailer Zara and its publicly traded parent company, Inditex; shares of Inditex weakened in the past month. Musk begins the new year worth $421.2 billion, per Forbes’ estimates, a $91 billion increase since December 1. The big jump in his fortune came after SpaceX agreed to buy back insiders’ shares in a deal valuing the rocket company at $350 billion–a deal first reported by Bloomberg. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, runs it as the CEO, and owns an estimated 42% stake in the company. The new valuation made SpaceX the most valuable private company in the world, more than TikTok parent ByteDance, payments firm Stripe or ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Musk also runs EV maker Tesla, and owns stakes in social media firm X, AI firm xAI and tunnel company Boring Co.
#46 Reinhold Wuerth & family
Additionally, they can use various tax deductions to offset reported income, enabling some to pay little or no income tax in recent years. As of 2025, the world has over 3,030 billionaires, collectively representing more than $16 trln in wealth. Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires ranking updates daily, adjusting for significant ownership in private companies and industry-specific market index changes, reflecting billionaires’ current net worth and rank. As of November 2025, the #1 world’s richest man is Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), his net worth is $464 bn. The wealthiest heirs are Ireland’s Mistry brothers, ages 26 and 28, each worth $4.9 bn due to their minority stakes in Tata Sons, a conglomerate covering IT, communications, engineering, and energy.
- Sergey Brin ($119.2 billion) occupied the 9th position, followed by Steve Ballmer (No.10, $118.5 billion) among the top 10 wealthiest people in the world list.
- Joseph Tsai is a cofounder of Alibaba Group and ranks as its second-largest individual shareholder after Jack Ma.
- Musk became the World’s Richest Person Again on June 8, 2023 and held onto the number one spot for the remainder of 2023.
- William Ding is the founder and CEO of NetEase, one of the world’s largest online games companies.
- It was revealed in July 2020 that Ortega’s property holdings, through his investment company Pontegadea, were worth $17.2 billion.
Steve Forbes said the growing number of billionaires was a clear sign that the world’s economy was recovering from the Great Recession. Slim narrowly eclipsed Gates to top the billionaire list for the first time. Slim saw his estimated worth surge $18.5 billion to $53.5 billion as shares of America Movil rose 35 percent. Gates’ estimated wealth rose $13 billion to $53 billion, placing him second.
- The $14.7 billion rise in his fortune lifted Brin up a notch to No. 7 from No. 8 at that start of December.
- Alphabet’s continued dominance in digital advertising and successful diversification into cloud computing, AI research, and other technological ventures has driven the company’s stock price to new heights in 2025.
- America’s Evan Spiegel, co-founder of photo messaging app Snapchat, became the youngest billionaire this year at age 24.
- He is the head of the Ortega family and the second wealthiest retailer in the world.
He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world’s largest technology infrastructure companies. Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French business magnate, investor, and art collector. He is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world’s largest luxury goods company. Louis Vuitton is a very successful luxury fashion brand, and Moet Hennessey is the merged champagne and cognac manufacturers. Elon Musk (53) has once again been named the world’s richest man in 2025 with an estimated fortune of $342 billion, according to Forbes’ 39th annual billionaires list, released Tuesday.
Beyond aerospace, Musk also leads Tesla, social media platform X, tunneling startup The Boring Company, and AI company xAI, solidifying his dominance across multiple industries. Elon Musk, the visionary entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, retains his crown as the world’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $433.9 billion. Musk made history in 2024 as the first individual to surpass a net worth of $400 billion, largely due to SpaceX’s massive valuation of $350 billion.
When a living individual has dispersed his or her wealth to immediate family members it is included under a single listing (as a single “family fortune”) provided that individual (the grantor) is still living. Royal families and dictators that have their wealth contingent on a position are always excluded from these lists. This list highlights how American wealth is concentrated in technology and diversified investment, with most of the top fortunes tied to breakthroughs in software, AI, and global commerce. Below you will find a dynamically updated, real time listing of the 100 richest people in the world today. In the early 1990s, the title was often held by Japanese real estate and investment moguls, emblematic of Japan’s economic bubble. However, as the decade progressed, American entrepreneurs, particularly from the technology sector, began to dominate the list.
Changpeng Zhao, who goes by CZ, is the founder and former CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter of the founder of L’Oreal, is the richest woman in the world. Mexico’s richest person, Carlos Slim Helú and his family control América Móvil, Latin America’s biggest mobile telecom firm. The 2025 billionaire rankings highlight both the extraordinary opportunities of the digital age and the persistent structural dynamics of wealth concentration. Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos may dominate today’s list, but the next decade promises new entrants from emerging industries and regions. These dynamics show that while technology fuels the greatest leaps, traditional industries and strategic capital allocation remain critical wealth drivers.
As of 2017, the pledge had 158 signatories, but some of the signatories have since died. Most of the signers of the pledge are billionaires, and their pledges total over $365 billion. The United States accounted for 403 billionaires, followed by China with 89 and Russia with 62. A total of 55 countries were represented on the 2010 list, including Finland and Pakistan which claimed their first billionaires. The combined net worth of the list was $3.6 trillion, up 50 percent from 2009’s $2.4 trillion, while the average net worth was $3.5 billion. A record total of 1,226 people made the 2012 list, representing 58 countries.
His net worth rose by 3.8 billion USD in December 2024, driven by a 1.9% increase in Meta shares. Bezos was the world’s richest person on Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires from 2018 through 2021; he dropped to second richest on the 2022 billionaires list and No. 3 on the 2024 list. The dynamic landscape of wealth in Asia has consistently captured global attention, with an impressive array of individuals making their mark on the Forbes real-time list of billionaires.
As we move forward, the volatility of these rankings will likely increase, with technological breakthroughs, market shifts, and policy changes all capable of dramatically reshaping the wealth hierarchy. What remains constant is the extraordinary scale of wealth concentration among these individuals, whose combined fortunes represent a significant portion of global economic resources. The gap between the ultra-wealthy and the merely wealthy continues to widen. The combined net worth of the top ten richest individuals now exceeds $2.3 trillion, equivalent to the GDP of significant economies like Italy or Brazil. This concentration raises questions about economic inequality and the influence of wealth on global policy and governance. Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, ranks eighth with a fortune of $152 billion.