The gap between the planet’s two wealthiest people has never been larger heading into the New Year.
Last update: August 1, 2025, 12 A.M. EDT
Six of the top 10 richest people in the world saw their fortunes fall over the past month as public stocks slumped into the New Year. The big exception: Elon Musk, whose net worth soared by an estimated $244 billion, to $726 billion as of 12 a.m. Eastern on January 1. The wealthiest person on the planet, Musk is now nearly three times richer than his runner-up, Google cofounder Larry Page.
Musk became the first person ever worth $600 billion on December 15, after private investors valued his rocket maker SpaceX at $800 billion, up from $400 billion in August. Four days later, he became the first person ever worth $700 billion, after the Delaware Supreme Court restored his Tesla stock options, which were voided by a lower court in 2024 and are now worth $130 billion.
Musk’s runner-up Larry Page, meanwhile, was the third-biggest loser among this month’s top 10, as shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet fell by 2%, amid the broader declines of both the S&P 500 (-0.7%) and tech-heavy Nasdaq (-0.8%). That shaved $5 billion and $6 billion off the fortunes of Page and his cofounder Sergey Brin (No. 5), who are now worth an estimated $257 billion and $237 billion, respectively. Only the world’s third-richest person, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, lost more without dropping out of the top 10, as Oracle’s shares slid by 3% and Ellison’s fortune fell by $8 billion, to an estimated $245 billion.
Michael Dell was the only member of last month’s top 10 who missed the cut this month, dropping from No. 9 worldwide to No. 12. His fortune fell by $13 billion, to an estimated $139 billion, as shares of Dell Technologies and Broadcom (which acquired Dell’s cloud software arm, VMware, in 2023) sank by 6% and 14%, respectively. That made room for former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who climbed from No. 11 to No. 10, despite seeing his fortune fall by $2 billion, to an estimated $147 billion.
Warren Buffett was the only other member of last month’s top 10 whose ranking changed this month, climbing from No. 10 to No. 9, even though his fortune fell by $3 billion, to an estimated $149 billion. That landed Buffett one spot behind this month’s biggest gainer, Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang, whose net worth climbed by $8 billion, to an estimated $162 billion, as shares of Nvidia rose by 5%.
Forbes has been tracking 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 January 1, 2026 at 12 a.m. Eastern time, according to Forbes. As a group, they’re worth $2.6 trillion combined, up $200 billion versus last month. Stock prices fluctuate routinely, so these net worths typically change on a daily basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes on our Real Time list of billionaires.
Key Facts
Elon Musk
is the richest person in the world, a title he’s held since May 2024.
Larry Page
overtook Larry Ellison to become the world’s second-wealthiest person in November.
Bill Gates
dropped out of the top 10 richest in October 2024 after Forbes obtained new information that led to 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 January 1 are men. Each of them is worth $147 billion or more, down from $152 billion last month.
Who are the top 10 richest people in the world?*
1. Elon Musk
2. Larry Page
3. Larry Ellison
4. Jeff Bezos
5. Sergey Brin
6. Mark Zuckerberg
7. Bernard Arnault
8. Jensen Huang
9. Warren Buffett (up from No. 10)
10. Steve Ballmer (up from No. 11)
*As of January 1, 2026 at 12 a.m. ET. Ranking changes since last month are in parenthesis.
Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $726 billion (up $244 billion since last month)
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X (formerly Twitter)
Age: 54
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: U.S.
On November 6, Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking pay package that could give Musk up to $1 trillion in additional stock (before taxes and the cost of unlocking the restricted shares) if Tesla achieves “Mars shot” performance milestones like growing its market cap more than eightfold over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI Holdings is reportedly in talks to raise new funding at a $230 billion valuation. That would be more than double the $113 billion valuation Musk claimed when he formed the company in March by merging AI startup xAI, which he founded in 2023, with social media company X (formerly Twitter), which he acquired for $44 billion (including debt) in 2022.
Musk is CEO of Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX, and chairman and chief technology officer of xAI Holdings.
He owns about 12% of Tesla’s stock (excluding options) and has pledged some of his shares as collateral for loans. On December 19, the Delaware Supreme Court restored Musk’s Tesla stock options, which were voided by a lower court in 2024 and are now worth $130 billion. Musk owns an estimated 42% of SpaceX, which is worth $800 billion based on a private tender offer in December (up from $400 billion in August).
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. Musk famously cofounded OpenAI with Sam Altman as a non-profit in 2015 but he left the organization’s board three years later following a failed power grab. More recently, the pair have been trading jabs at each other.
Musk first became the world’s richest person in September 2021 and was the world’s richest person for most of 2022—falling from the top spot in 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 and has held onto the top spot ever since. In October, he became the first person ever worth $500 billion. In December, he crossed both the $600 billion and $700 billion marks.
2. Larry Page
Net worth: $257 billion (down $5 billion since last month)
Source: Google
Age: 52
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Page has come a long way to take the title of the second-richest person on the planet. When Forbes locked in the 2025 World’s Billionaires List in March, he ranked No. 7, with an estimated $144 billion fortune. A decade ago, he ranked No. 19.
Page cofounded search engine Google with fellow Stanford Ph.D student Sergey Brin in 1998 and served as CEO until 2001 and from 2011 to 2015. Page now serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and continues to be a controlling shareholder. He is reportedly working on a new AI startup called Dynatomics that is focused on product manufacturing.
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. In the biggest antitrust case in decades, a federal judge ruled in September that Google does not have to sell Chrome.
Page was a founding investor in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018.
3. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $245 billion (down $8 billion since last month)
Source: Oracle
Age: 81
Residence: Woodside, California
Citizenship: U.S.
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 the UAE’s MGX investment fund. The group has committed to spend $500 billion over four years to build AI infrastructure—mainly data centers—in the U.S.
Ellison teamed up with his son David to help pull off the August merger of Paramount and David’s Skydance Media. The older Ellison controls approximately 77.5% of the voting rights of the combined entity. Paramount is now in a bidding war with Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
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 mid-September, Ellison was briefly the second ever person worth $400 billion and was within $40 billion of Musk, thanks to Oracle’s rosy revenue projections for its cloud infrastructure business (mostly to power AI) that pushed shares up 36% in a single day. Since then, Oracle’s shares have slid by nearly 40% as some analysts have raised questions about an AI bubble, the profit margins on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure sales and their dependence upon a partnership with OpenAI.
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.
4. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $242 billion (down $2 billion since last month)
Source: Amazon
Age: 61
Residence: Miami, Florida
Citizenship: U.S.
In November, the New York Times reported that Bezos is taking on his first operational role since retiring as Amazon’s CEO in 2021. He will reportedly serve as co-CEO of an AI startup called Project Prometheus, which has raised nearly $6 billion and will focus on engineering and manufacturing.
Bezos created e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 and ran it as CEO until July 2021 (he remains executive chairman). That same month he traveled 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 in the spring of 2025—including pop star Katy Perry, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King and Bezos’ second wife, Lauren Sanchez.)
Before founding Amazon.com in his garage in Seattle, Bezos worked at McDonald’s as a teen, graduated from Princeton and 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’ annual World’s Billionaires list from 2018 through 2021; he dropped to second richest on the 2022 ranking and No. 3 on the list from 2023 through 2025.
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 8% of the company. Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes calculates that Bezos has sold more than $49 billion worth of his stock. Through his Bezos Expeditions he has invested in an array of companies, including Airbnb and software firm Workday.
5. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $237 billion (down $6 billion since last month)
Source: Google
Age: 52
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
While Page keeps a notoriously low profile, Brin is back helping Alphabet with AI strategy. He first 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. Like his cofounder, Brin currently serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder. In late November, Brin reported gifting $1.1 billion of Alphabet stock, with almost all of it reportedly going to his nonprofit Catalyst4, which focuses on conditions of the central nervous system and climate change.
6. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $226 billion (up $4 billion since last month)
Source: Meta (Facebook)
Age: 41
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Zuckerberg cofounded Facebook when he was a student at Harvard University in 2004. Now called Meta, 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, who remains CEO, took the company public in 2012 and still owns about 13% of it.
In October, Zuckerberg was in the audience at the Wall Street Journal’s Innovator of the Year Awards, when his wife Priscilla Chan took home the top prize for her role in the couple’s philanthropy focused on curing and presenting diseases–and the singer Billie Eilish asked the crowd, “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?”
7. Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $195 billion (up $5 billion since last month)
Source: LVMH/ luxury goods
Age: 76
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
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 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.
8. Jensen Huang
Net worth: $162 billion (up $8 billion since last month)
Source: Semiconductors
Age: 62
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Huang cofounded 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, helping it become the first ever company worth $5 trillion in October.
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.
9. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $149 billion (down $3 billion since last month)
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 95
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: U.S.
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13. At the end of December, he retired as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen. He will remain the company’s chairman.
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 given away some $65 billion, mostly through the Gates Foundation (formerly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), foundations run by his children and one started by his late first wife.
10. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $147 billion (down $2 billion since last month)
Source: Microsoft, Los Angeles Clippers
Age: 69
Residence: Hunts Point, Washington
Citizenship: U.S.
The former Microsoft CEO spoke on a podcast in June about his commitment to holding onto most of his Microsoft shares since he left the company in 2014. 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 for $2 billion—a record high for an NBA team at the time. Forbes now values the franchise at $7.5 billion. The new home for the Clippers, the Intuit Dome in Inglewood—not far from Los Angeles International Airport—opened in August 2024. An investigation is currently underway following a report that accused the Clippers of circumventing NBA salary cap rules with a no-show marketing deal between star Kawhi Leonard and a Ballmer-backed company. A spokesperson for Ballmer declined to comment.
Who is the richest man in the world?
As of January 1, 2026, the planet’s wealthiest man is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He’s worth $726 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 planet’s wealthiest woman is Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. As of January 1, 2026, she is worth an estimated $119 billion and is the world’s 15th-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.
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