Booming tech stocks lifted the fortunes of eight of the world’s top 10 wealthiest. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang hit a high mark. Here are the richest people in the world, right now.
Key Takeaways
- Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, a title he’s held since May 2024.
- Larry Ellison remains the world’s second wealthiest person for the second month in a row.
- Bill Gates dropped out of the top 10 richest in October 2024 after Forbes obtained new information about a significant contraction in his fortune.
- 9/10 of the richest people in the world are Americans. The one non-U.S. citizen: France’s Bernard Arnault.
- All of the top ten richest people as of August 1 are men. Each of them is worth $138 billion or more.
In a month where the biggest tech companies led U.S. stock market indices to successive new highs, the CEO of sizzling AI chip firm Nvidia also joined the upward march. Jensen Huang begins August as the sixth richest person in the world, per Forbes’ estimates, up from No. 10 at the start of July. His fortune expanded by $17 billion in the past month to nearly $155 billion as Nvidia became the first company with a market capitalization of $4 trillion; its shares rose about 14% during July.
Huang wasn’t even the biggest gainer among the top ten wealthiest, in dollar terms. That prize went to the world’s No. 2 richest, Larry Ellison. Shares of his software and cloud computing firm Oracle also surged 14% during July, and added $37 billion to Ellison’s net worth; it’s now just shy of $300 billion. In late July his son David Ellison’s firm Skydance sealed a deal to acquire Paramount–owner of CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and more–for $8 billion, helped along by Larry Ellison’s fortune and his warm ties with President Trump.
Another in the top 10, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, attracted lots of attention for the $100 million-sized pay packages his company has been awarding the cream of AI talent. On the last day of July, Zuckerberg’s fortune rallied by nearly $27 billion following a strong quarterly earnings report on July 30. Despite the big July 31 surge, Zuckerberg’s net worth jump for the month was a more muted $12 billion gain, putting him at just under $267 billion.
Eight of the world’s top 10 richest begin August with fatter fortunes than on July 1. The two outliers: Elon Musk, whose fortune contracted by $5.3 billion, and Warren Buffett, whose net worth dropped by $2.2 billion. Musk is still the world’s richest person, worth an estimated $401 billion–and the only person on Forbes’ list worth more than $400 billion. Buffett fell to No. 9, down three spots from a month ago. Altogether, the world’s top 10 richest are worth $2.1 trillion– $100 billion more than on July 1.
Ortega is one of four billionaires from last month’s top 10 who lost money in June. The biggest loser was Elon Musk, whose net worth fell by an estimated $16 billion to $407 billion in June.
Forbes has been keeping track of the world’s billionaires since 1987. In April 2025 we found 3,028 of them for our annual list.
Below are the 10 richest people on earth as of August 1, 2025 at 12 a.m. Eastern time, according to Forbes. Stock prices fluctuate routinely, so these net worths may change on a daily basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes on our Real Time list of billionaires.
Who are the top 10 richest people in the world?*
1. Elon Musk
2. Larry Ellison
3. Mark Zuckerberg
4. Jeff Bezos
5. Larry Page
6. Jensen Huang
7. Sergey Brin
8. Steve Ballmer
9. Warren Buffett
10. Bernard Arnault
*As of August 1, 2025 at 12 a.m. ET
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $401 billion
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X
Age: 53
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: U.S.
Musk’s fortune dropped $5.5 billion in the past month due to a 3% decline in the price of electric vehicle firm Tesla’s shares. That’s a tiny sliver of his current estimated $401 billion net worth. Challenges at Tesla have been repeated with several quarters of declining EV sales. Musk vows that Tesla’s robotaxi service, currently a small operation, will expand dramatically in the coming months.
Musk is CEO of Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX; chairman and chief technology officer of social media company X, formerly known as Twitter; and founder of artificial intelligence firm xAI. In late March, xAI acquired X at a valuation that Musk stated was $45 billion (including debt); Musk paid $44 billion (including debt) to acquire Twitter in October 2022.
He owns about 12% of Tesla’s stock and has pledged some of his stock as collateral for loans. The electric car maker’s shareholders voted in June 2024 in favor of Musk keeping performance based stock options that would be worth nearly $90 billion today in what a Delaware judge had earlier called “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets,” when she voided the award in January 2024 and affirmed the ruling in December. A lengthy appeal of the Delaware ruling is likely ongoing. Until Musk receives those options, Forbes will continue to discount the Tesla options from the pay package by 50%.
Originally from South Africa, Musk moved to Canada before his 18th birthday, worked a variety of jobs, enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.
In 2000, he merged an online bank he cofounded, X.com, with a similar outfit cofounded 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 chairman, a year after it was founded; he was later granted the cofounder title. Musk, who became CEO of Tesla in 2008, took the company public in 2010. In September 2021, Musk became the world’s richest person. Musk was also the world’s richest person for most of 2022—until December 2022. Musk became the world’s richest person again on June 8, 2023 and held onto the number one spot for the remainder of 2023. He fell to No. 2 on January 31, 2024.
Musk became the world’s richest person yet again in late May 2024, after his startup xAI raised $6 billion from private investors at a $24 billion valuation. According to Musk, xAI is now worth $80 billion.
2. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $299.6 billion
Source: Oracle
Age: 80
Residence: Woodside, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Ellison maintains his spot as the world’s No. 2 richest as of August 1, following a $37 billion jump in his fortune in a month. The gap between Ellison and No. 1 Musk narrowed from $144 billion on July 1 to $101.6 billion at midnight on August 1.
In January, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, Ellison was on hand when Trump announced the Stargate Project, a venture with Ellison’s firm Oracle, Chat GPT creator OpenAI, Japan’s Masayoshi Son and his firm Softbank and MGX of the UAE. The group initially said it would spend $500 billion over four years to build AI infrastructure—mainly data centers—in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Stargate has scaled back its goals for 2025 to build one small data center.
Ellison cofounded software firm Oracle in 1977 and ran it as CEO until 2014; he now serves as chairman and chief technology officer of the company.
In 2012, Ellison bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. He also owns homes in California, Nevada and Florida. Ellison invested in Tesla and served on the board of the electric vehicle company from 2018 through August 2022.
3. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $266.7 billion
Source: Meta (Facebook)
Age: 41
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
The social media CEO ended July with a bang after Meta beat analysts’ expectations with second quarter earnings. Earnings per share hit $7.14 per share on revenue of $47.5 billion, beating reported analyst expectations of $5.89 a share. Revenue also beat expectations, and shares rose 11% in a day.
Zuckerberg cofounded Facebook—now called Meta Platforms—when he was a student at Harvard University in 2004. It has grown to be the world’s largest social network, with several billion users globally. The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which it acquired and greatly expanded. Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, took the company public in 2012 and still owns about 13% of it.
4. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $246.4 billion
Source: Amazon
Age: 61
Residence: Miami, Florida
Citizenship: U.S.
Bezos’ fortune climbed by $13 billion in the month of July as Amazon shares rose nearly 7%. The Amazon founder also made headlines in late June for his blowout wedding to Lauren Sanchez in Venice, Italy.
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 on a rocket built by private rocket company Blue Origin, which he founded and has funded with billions of dollars. (Blue Origin briefly sent an all-female crew to space last month—including pop star Katy Perry, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King and Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sanchez.)
Before founding Amazon.com in his garage in Seattle, Bezos worked in New York at hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Amazon began as an online bookseller at a time when few people bought goods online. The company also grew to dominate cloud storage and moved into movie and series production to feed Amazon Prime Video.
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.
In 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced; as part of the settlement, she got 4% of Amazon’s shares and he kept 12%. He has since sold and given away more of his stake and owns 9% of the company. Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes calculates that he has sold more than $38 billion worth of his stock. Through his Bezos Expeditions he has invested in an array of companies, including Airbnb and software firm Workday.
5. Larry Page
Net worth: $158 billion
Source: Google
Age: 52
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
The fortune of Google cofounder Larry Page rocketed up a bit more than $12 billion in the past month on the back of a nearly 9% uptick in Alphabet shares. The search-engine and AI giant rode the market higher along with its top-tier tech peers. Page’s No. 5 rank is unchanged from a month ago.
Page cofounded search engine Google with fellow Stanford PhD student Sergey Brin in 1998 and served as CEO until 2001 and from 2011 to 2015. He now serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and continues to be a controlling shareholder.
In late 2024, the Department of Justice said Google should sell its Chrome browser in order to reduce the company’s dominance online. In response, Google said in a statement that such a move would hurt consumers and America’s technological leadership. The decision may have been one reason that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai attended Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
Page was a founding investor in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018.
6. Jensen Huang
Net worth: $154.8 billion
Source: Semiconductors
Age: 62
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Huang, now No. 6 in the world due to surging Nvidia shares, said the quiet part out loud recently. “I’ve created more billionaires on my management team than any CEO in the world,” the Nvidia CEO said at a panel hosted by the All-In podcast. He’s certainly enriched anyone who’s owned Nvidia stock for the long haul.
Huang cofounded graphics-chip maker Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its CEO and president ever since. He owns approximately 3% of the company, which he took public in 1999. Under Huang, Nvidia’s GPUs became dominant first in computer gaming and now in AI, propelling the company’s market capitalization to $3.9 trillion as of June 30.
Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to Thailand as a child, but his family sent him and his brother to the U.S as civil unrest mounted in the Asian nation.
7. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $150.8 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
The fortune of Google cofounder Sergey Brin rose by $11.3 billion in the month, thanks to the increase in Alphabet shares in the past month.
Brin and his cofounder Larry Page launched the search engine Google when they were both Stanford computer science PhD candidates. Like Page, Brin currently serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder.
Brin came out of semi-retirement to submit changes to Google’s Gemini AI chatbot last year and was listed as a “core contributor” when the model was released in December.
7. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $148.7 billion
Source: Microsoft, LA Clippers, investments
Age: 69
Residence: Hunts Point, Washington
Citizenship: U.S.
The former Microsoft CEO–who spoke on a podcast in June about his commitment to holding onto most of his Microsoft shares since he left the company in 2014–got an estimated $7.5 billion wealthier in the past month, buoyed by a 7% advance in Microsoft shares.
Ballmer, a classmate of Bill Gates at Harvard University, joined Microsoft as employee number 30 in 1980 after dropping out of the MBA program at Stanford University. He ran Microsoft as its CEO from 2000 to 2014.
When Ballmer retired from Microsoft, he purchased the Los Angeles Clippers team for $2 billion—a record high for an NBA team at the time. Forbes now values the team at $5.5 billion. The new home for the Clippers, the Intuit Dome in Inglewood—not far from Los Angeles International Airport—opened in August 2024.
9. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $143.4 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 94
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: U.S.
Warren Buffett was one of just two in the top 10 whose fortunes fell in the past month, a $2.2 billion drop as a result of a slightly more than 1% decline in Berkshire Hathaway shares. Buffett dropped from No. 6 richest in July to No. 9.
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. He still runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen, but announced in May that he will retire as CEO at the end of 2025. The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.
Buffett created the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2010, asking billionaires to commit to give away at least half their fortune to charitable groups. Buffett has said he would donate 99% of his fortune. So far he’s give more than $66 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation (formerly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), foundations run by his children and one started by his late first wife. The Giving Pledge turns 15 years old this year.
10. Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $142.9 billion
Source: LVMH/ luxury goods
Age: 76
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
The luxury goods tycoon got $4.5 billion richer due to a roughly 6% rise in LVMH shares. But that wasn’t enough to keep the No. 9 spot he had a month ago. Now he ranks No. 10 in the world.
Bernard Arnault is CEO and chairman of luxury goods group LVMH. Arnault’s father made millions in the construction business; to get his start, Arnault used $15 million of that fortune to buy Christian Dior. He has since built the largest luxury goods company in the world with some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Moet & Chandon, Sephora and jeweler Tiffany & Co.
All five of Arnault’s children work in parts of the LVMH empire. In 2024, Arnault nominated two of his sons—Alexandre and Frédéric—to the board of LVMH; Alexandre was named deputy CEO of LVMH’s wine and spirits division. His daughter Delphine, who runs Dior, and son Antoine, already sit on the board. In June 2024, he named son Frédéric as head of LVMH’s family holding group. His youngest son, Jean, is director of watches at Louis Vuitton.
Arnault was the world’s richest person for most of the first half of 2023 and again from February through late May 2024.
Who is the richest man in the world?
As of August 1, 2025, the richest person in the world is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He’s worth $401.2 billion. He moved into the number one spot in late May 2024, overtaking Bernard Arnault of France.
Who is the richest woman in the world?
The richest woman in the world is Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. As of August 1, 2025, she is worth an estimated $107 billion and is the world’s 16th richest person. Her fortune lies in her ownership stake in retailer Walmart, which she inherited from her late father. Her brothers Rob, Jim and John (d. 2005) also inherited stakes in Walmart from their father. John’s widow Christy Walton and their son Lukas Walton inherited John’s shares and both rank on Forbes’ billionaires list.
