Forbes billionaires 2022: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos top list

Beyond their riches, these elites are also innovators in their own space — whether it be in finance, tech or even space. Often, these billionaires are founders of enterprise giants and multinational companies, with much of their wealth coming from the companies that they started. The 12 tycoons on Bloomberg’s 5 wealthiest people in the world list are collectively worth $1.4 trillion. That figure is about equal to Google-parent Alphabet’s total market value, and equivalent to more than 5% of the US economy’s GDP of $26.5 trillion last quarter. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg are the biggest winners on the list.

A record total of 1,426 people made the 2013 list, representing $5.4 trillion of assets.[34] Of those, 442 billionaires hailed from the United States.[32] The Asian-Pacific region had 386 billionaires and Europe 366. The list also featured a record number of newcomers, 210, representing 42 countries. 60 people from the 2012 list fell below a billion dollars of assets in 2013, and eight others from the 2012 list died. The Asia-Pacific region had the most drop-offs, with 29, followed by the United States with 16. The 2013 list featured 138 women, of which 50 came from the United States. The U.S. had the most billionaires in the world, with a record of 565.

Bernard Arnault

Here, bottles of soda water produced by the beverage company Nongfu Spring are displayed for sale at a supermarket on June 29, 2021 in Shanghai, China. The founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became billionaires at age 30. Google also offers a variety of electronic devices, including Pixel smartphones, computers, and tablets, Nest smart home devices, and the Stadia gaming platform. In 1977, Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories alongside Oates and Miner. Two years later, the company released Oracle, the first commercial relational database program to use Structured Query Language.

With so much of their wealth in publicly traded stocks, the net worth of the richest fluctuates along with the market valuations of the companies they own. Below are the 10 wealthiest people on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In today’s fast-changing world, the richest people don’t just have a lot of money.

Julia Koch & Family – Net Worth: $67.4 billion

The family is usually in the top three of Forbes’ wealthiest people in the world lists. Between March 2020 and April 2021 the world minted a new billionaire every 17 hours, as 493 people joined the ranks of those with nine-figure net worths. In October 2021, about a year and a half into the pandemic, the 400 richest people in the U.S. grew their net worth by 40%, accumulating an additional $4.5 trillion. At the same time unemployment levels were recovering from the surge of layoffs that accompanied the outset of the pandemic, but still saw 7.4 million Americans out of work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Tesla co-founder, who this year changed his title from CEO to “Technoking of Tesla” in a March regulatory filing, has enjoyed a massive wealth increase thanks to the rapid growth of his electric automaker.

Buffett has said he believes America’s wealthiest should pay more in taxes. There are almost 30,000 families in the U.S. with assets of more than $100 million, Buffett’s among them. Like many tech execs, Page has peeled off a portion of his wealth and put it into futuristic startups. China has 473 billionaires and India has 200, which set a record for that country.