Just having ten figures is not enough.
Money is the only thing that can buy you a spot on The Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans—but it takes a lot of it. With markets trading near all-time highs, the minimum net worth to rank among the top 400 people in the U.S. has skyrocketed to $4.4 billion, $600 million more than a year ago. That lofty cutoff has left a record 590 American billionaires too poor to make the list, up from 500 in 2025.
Several famous faces just aren’t rich enough, including celebrities Oprah Winfrey (estimated net worth, $3.4 billion—a full billion short of making the list), pop star Taylor Swift ($2 billion) and hip hop mogul Dr. Dre ($1 billion). Plenty of high-profile business names can’t cut it either, including former eBay and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman ($4.2 billion), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ($3.3 billion) and former Apple CEO Tim Cook ($3 billion)
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Competition for a spot on the ranking is tough. Ninety percent of 2025 listees held onto their spot. Of the 34 billionaires who fell off the list, seven are actually richer than they were in 2025. That includes industrial tycoon Ira Rennert, hedge fund manager Scott Schleifer and casino mogul Steve Wynn. Two drop-offs saw no change in their fortune since last year; while 25 are poorer. An additional six members of last year’s list passed away.
Five U.S. billionaires were worth $4.3 billion as of September 4, the day we locked in our list—ending up just $100 million shy of making the grade, part of a dozen Americans who were worth at least $4 billion that day but fell short of the cutoff. They, like the hundreds of other American billionaires who find themselves on the outside looking in this year, will have to try again in 2027.
Here are some of the most prominent American billionaires who aren’t rich enough to make the Forbes 400—at least yet.
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
Net worth: $1 billion
Source of wealth: Entertainment
The popstar has been stacking cash since she was a teen star with Destiny’s Child, but really began raking it in when she founded Parkwood Entertainment in 2010, bringing control of nearly every aspect of her career in-house—from music to documentaries to concerts—fronting most of the production costs in order to capture more of the back-end economics. It’s paid off, with her Cowboy Carter Tour taking in $450 million in ticket and merchandise sales last year, making Queen Bey a billionaire, though she’ll need to hit a lot more stops before she’s rich enough to make The Forbes 400 (and her husband, rapper Jay-Z, who is worth an estimated $2.8 billion, might get there first).
Sanjay Mehrotra
Net worth: $1.2 billion
Source of wealth: Semiconductors
Shares of Micron Technology have rallied more than 700% since last year’s ranking, driven by booming demand for the semiconductor firm’s memory chips. Mehrotra immigrated to the United States at age 18 to study electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, then cofounded and ran flash memory pioneer SanDisk before taking the CEO job at Micron in 2017. He owns around 0.1% of the company’s stock, making him a billionaire earlier this year.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Net worth: $1.2 billion
Source of wealth: Media, investments
Born to a poor family in a small Austrian village, he immigrated to the U.S., became a famous bodybuilder, then at one point America’s highest-paid actor, then served two terms as governor of California. In 2024, he added billionaire to his resume, thanks to a lot of Hollywood and sponsorship cash, plus shrewd investments in real estate and investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors. But not even the Terminator has been able to conquer The Forbes 400 just yet.
LeBron James
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Source of wealth: Basketball
The NBA great has earned more than $500 million in pretax salary over his playing career, and has added more than $1.1 billion (pretax) off the court from partnerships with brands like Nike, AT&T and Beats. But, in July, he gave himself a huge pay cut when he announced he was switching teams, agreeing to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers for $4 million per year, far less than his $53 million salary with the Los Angeles Lakers. At that rate, he’d have to play 750 more years to earn enough on the court to make this year’s Forbes 400.
Kim Kardashian
Net worth: $1.9 billion
Source of wealth: Skincare
Kim K added $200 million to her fortune after her apparel company Skims announced last November that it raised $225 million in funding, pushing its valuation to $5 billion. Kardashian, who also has a private equity venture called SKKY Partners, is richer than ever, but still less than halfway to the top 400.
Taylor Swift
Net worth: $2 billion
Source of wealth: Music
The first musician to make the list solely from her music sales and performances, Swift joined the billionaire ranks in 2023, on the back of her record-breaking global Eras Tour, which generated more than $2 billion in revenue. She has since doubled her wealth after dropping two albums, picking up three more Grammys and taking full control of her music catalog.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss
Net worth: $2.9 billion
Source of wealth: Cryptocurrency
The identical twins fell off The Forbes 400 this year, amid an 85% drop in the share price of their crypto exchange company Gemini Space Station amid the crypto winter, which has also slashed the value of their personal Bitcoin hoard. Earlier this year, they announced Gemini would lay off a quarter of its staff, shut down in the UK, EU and Australia, and pivot to prediction markets. Shares are down 40% since.
Sam Altman
Net worth: $3.3 billion
Source of wealth: Venture capital
Despite being the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, the $40 billion (annualized revenue) juggernaut behind ChatGPT, Altman famously holds no equity in the company. His smart and well-timed venture investments in giants like Stripe and Reddit make up most of his net worth, but still leave him short of this year’s Forbes 400.
Oprah Winfrey
Net worth: $3.4 billion
Source of wealth: Media and entertainment
Oprah dropped off The Forbes 400 list in 2020, and is yet to make it back. She’s been getting richer, thanks in part to her media empire (she celebrated the 40-year anniversary of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in September) but keeps getting outpaced by other billionaires whose wealth is growing faster.
Dave Baszucki
Net worth: $3.4 billion
Source of Wealth: Gaming
Shares of his gaming company Roblox have fallen 65% since last year’s list, dropping founder and CEO Baszucki from No. 211 on the list last year, worth $7 billion, to out of the ranks entirely. Roblox has been struggling with a drop in daily active players and lower user spending, and in August two U.S. Senators launched a probe into how the 125 million (daily users) app polices sexual abuse. The company responded that “We look forward to sharing the facts about how we protect children on the platform.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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