Many billionaires hold a large portion of their net worth in shares of the company they founded.
Taken from Forbes
Billionaires are some of the most powerful people on Earth, wielding significant influence over large parts of the global economy and playing key roles in everything from international politics and media to philanthropy and scientific innovation.
They created companies that employ tens or even hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and are behind some of the best-known brands, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Google, and Nike.
Most of those on this Forbes list are self-made millionaires; others, like Bernard Arnault and Rupert Murdoch, had a bit more of a head start, but they greatly expanded their fortunes and built empires in their respective industries.
Many billionaires hold a large portion of their net worth in shares of the company they founded.
As the stock price moves, his fortune moves along with it. In March 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was the fifth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $97 billion.
Since then, Facebook's shares (renamed Meta Platforms) have plummeted by more than 40%; Zuckerberg dropped out of the top 10 richest and as of January 31, 2023, he ranks 23rd, with a value of $58 billion.
India's Gautam Adani overtook Mukesh Ambani to become Asia's richest person in February 2022.
His fortune skyrocketed by $55 billion last year, and quickly climbed even higher in the rankings. By the end of January, he was the third richest person in the world.
Then, short seller Hindenburg Research published a scathing report accusing the Adani Group of running a “corporate scam,” which the billionaire and his companies vehemently denied.
Even so, his fortune began to fall rapidly and he dropped out of the top 10 richest on February 1, 2023.
Here is the Forbes list of the 10 richest people in the world as of February 1 at 8:00 a.m. EST.
Stock prices fluctuate routinely, so these net values may change daily.
KEY FACTS
Bernard Arnault, from France, is the richest person in the world. The CEO of the luxury goods company LVMH has a fortune of nearly $214 billion.
Elon Musk, who was the richest person for much of 2022, became the second richest person in December 2022.
7/10 of the world's richest people are Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates.
Gautam Adani, from India, fell from third place richest in the world on January 24, 2023 to thirteenth place on February 1, 2023.
100% of the 10 richest people are men.
WHO ARE THE 10 RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD?
- Bernard Arnault
- Elon Musk
- Jeff Bezos
- Larry Ellison
- Warren Buffett
- Bill Gates
- Carlos Slim Helú
- Larry Page
- Mukesh Ambani
- Sergey Brin
* Data as of February 1, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time.
FACTS ABOUT THE 10 RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
1. Bernard Arnault
Net Worth: $213.7 billion
Source: LVMH / Luxury Goods
Age: 73
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
Bernard Arnault is the CEO and Chairman of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company with approximately 70 fashion and cosmetics brands. Among its most prominent brands are Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Moët & Chandon, and Sephora. In January 2021, LVMH acquired Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion.
Arnault's father made millions in the construction business. To begin with, Arnault used $15 million of that fortune to buy Christian Dior.
Four of Arnault's five children work in different parts of the LVMH empire. In January 2023, Arnault appointed his daughter Delphine to head Dior, the group's second-largest brand.
2. Elon Musk
Net worth: $178.3 billion
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter
Age: 51
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: US
Musk is the CEO of electric car company Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, and social media company Twitter. He owns about 25% of Tesla through stock and options, but has pledged more than half of his shares as collateral for loans. The car company still accounts for more than half of his fortune. He bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and owns approximately 74% of the social media company.
Musk, originally from South Africa, moved to Canada before he turned 18, 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 co-founded, X.com, with a similar team co-founded 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 its founding; he was later granted the title of co-founder. Musk, who became CEO of Tesla in 2008, took the company public in 2010.
Its market capitalization skyrocketed during 2020 and 2021. In September 2021, Musk became the richest person in the world. In November 2021, his fortune peaked at $320 billion.
Musk remained the world's richest person until December 2022, when a drop in Tesla's stock price drastically reduced his fortune. Tesla's stock fell by more than 50% from its peak in November 2021 to January 31, 2023.
3. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $126.3 billion
Source: Amazon
Age: 59
Residence: Medina, Washington
Citizenship: US
Jeff Bezos resigned as CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon in July 2021, but remains chairman; that same month he went into space on a rocket built by the private rocket company Blue Origin, which he founded and has funded with billions of dollars.
Bezos founded the online retailer Amazon.com in his Seattle garage in 1994, after leaving a job in New York at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Amazon began as an online bookstore at a time when few people bought products online. Amazon grew to dominate cloud storage and moved into producing movies and TV series to feed Amazon Prime Video.
Bezos overtook Bill Gates to become the world's richest person in July 2017. He and Gates traded the number one and number two richest spots from time to time.
Bezos was the world's richest person on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires from 2018 to 2021; he fell to second richest on the 2022 billionaires list.
He fell to fourth richest, but returned to third place on January 25, 2023 when the fortune of Gautam Adani of India (formerly the third richest) fell.
In 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced; as part of the agreement, she received 4% of Amazon's shares and he kept 12%.
Since then, he has sold more of his stake and owns around 10% of the company.
Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes estimates that it has sold more than $27 billion worth of its shares.
4. Larry Ellison
Net Worth: $111.9 billion
Source: Oracle
Age: 78
Residence: Lanai, Hawaii
Citizenship: U.S.
Larry Ellison co-founded the software company Oracle in 1977 and led it as CEO until 2014; he now serves as the company's president and chief technology officer. Over the years, Oracle has made a number of major acquisitions, including purchasing Sun Microsystems in 2010.
In 2012, Ellison bought the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. He moved from California to Lanai in 2020.
Ellison invested in Tesla and was part of the automotive company's board of directors from 2018 until August 2022.
5. Warren Buffett
Net Worth: $108.5 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 92
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: U.S.
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. He heads the investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including the insurer Geico, the battery manufacturer Duracell, and the restaurant chain Dairy Queen. The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stocks at age 11 and filed his first tax return at age 13.
Buffett created the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2010, asking billionaires to commit to donating at least half of their fortune to charitable groups. Buffett has said he would donate 99% of his fortune.
To date, he has donated $51.5 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and his children's foundations. That makes him the most generous billionaire on the planet.
6. Bill Gates
Net Worth: $104.5 billion
Source: Microsoft, investments
Age: 67
Residence: Medina, Washington
Citizenship: U.S.
As a teenager, Gates became passionate about computer programming. He dropped out of Harvard to co-found the software firm Microsoft with his high school friend Paul Allen in 1975, creating one of the first software programs available to the fledgling personal computer industry. He was the company's CEO for 25 years and remained chairman until 2014. He finally stepped down from the board in 2020. Today, he has investments in dozens of companies, including Republic Services and Deere & Co., and is one of the largest owners of farmland in the U.S.
Forbes first listed Gates as a billionaire in 1987; he was the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2017 (except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013).
Largely due to the $59 billion he donated to the Gates Foundation, including a $20 billion donation in July 2022, Jeff Bezos surpassed him as the world's richest person in 2018.
He and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021; he received at least $6 billion in stock as part of the divorce settlement.
7. Carlos Slim Helú
Net worth: $91.7 billion
Source: Telecommunications, investments
Age: 83
Residence: Mexico City
Citizenship: Mexico
Carlos Slim Helú and his family control América Móvil, the largest mobile telecommunications company in Latin America, with operations in at least 15 countries. Slim and some foreign telecommunications partners acquired Telmex, the state-owned telephone company, in 1990. Telmex became part of América Móvil.
He also holds stakes in Mexican construction, consumer goods, mining, and real estate companies. He used to own 17% of The New York Times, but sold his stake in 2021.
Slim surpassed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the richest person in the world between 2010 and 2013. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Slim taught algebra at UNAM, a university in Mexico City.
8. Larry Page
Net worth: $85.8 billion
Source: Google
Age: 49
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: US
Page and his fellow Stanford computer science PhD student, Sergey Brin, co-founded Google in 1998, creating a search engine that took off and made money selling ads. Over the years, Google acquired YouTube, ventured into self-driving cars, and experimented with various forms of wearables, including Google Glass, which failed to gain traction.
Page resigned as chief executive of Google's parent company, Alphabet, in December 2019, but remains a board member and majority shareholder.
He is a founding investor in the space exploration company Planetary Resources and is also funding the flying car startups Kitty Hawk and Opener.
9. Mukesh Ambani
Net worth: $83.7 billion
Source: petrochemicals, telecommunications
Age: 65
Residence: Mumbai, India
Citizenship: India
Mukesh Ambani is chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries, a $104 billion company with interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecommunications, and retail. It owns Network18, a licensee of Forbes Media, and the Mandarian Oriental hotel in New York. Reliance was founded by his late father, Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father's death in 2002, Ambani and his younger brother, Anil, divided the family empire.
Ambani was India's richest person for 14 years until he was overtaken by Gautam Adani in February 2022. He ranked among the world's 10 richest people in the Forbes world ranking between 2008 and 2011 and again from 2021 onwards.
10. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $82.2 billion
Source: Google
Age: 49
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: US.
Sergey Brin stepped down as chairman of Alphabet, Google's parent company, in December 2019, but remains a majority shareholder and board member. He co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998 after the two met at Stanford University while pursuing advanced degrees in computer science. Brin, who came to the United States from Russia at age 6 due to antisemitism against his family, is the wealthiest immigrant in the US.
WHO IS THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD?
As of February 1, 2023, the richest man in the world is Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of France's LVMH; he is worth almost 214 billion.
It moved to the number one spot after Elon Musk's fortune fell in late 2022 when shares of electric car manufacturer Tesla plummeted.
WHO IS THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD?
The richest woman in the world is Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France. As of February 1, 2023, her net worth is 81.2 billion.
Her fortune stems from her ownership of shares in the cosmetics giant L'Oreal, which she inherited from her late mother. Her grandfather was the founder of L'Oreal.
