Besides his stake in Inditex, Ortega has diversified his wealth into real estate, with investments in commercial properties across major cities like Madrid, London, and New York. His real estate portfolio is managed through his investment firm, Pontegadea. Brin’s wealth is primarily from his significant ownership stake in Alphabet. Google’s success in digital advertising and its various products and services have greatly increased Alphabet’s value, boosting Brin’s net worth. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder. He restored the group’s profitability by pursuing a strategy to create the world’s leading luxury products company.

1. Google also offers a variety of electronic devices, including Pixel smartphones, computers, and tablets, Nest smart home devices, and the Stadia gaming platform.
2. The wealthiest heirs are Ireland’s Mistry brothers, ages 25 and 27, each worth $4.9 bn due to their minority stakes in Tata Sons, a conglomerate covering IT, communications, engineering, and energy.
3. The billionaire philanthropist and real-estate investor stopped running Inditex in 2011.
4. During his tenure, he focused on expanding Microsoft’s enterprise services, pushing into the cloud, and introducing products like the Xbox and Surface tablet.
5. Elon Musk founded or co-founded several major companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and PayPal.

Bill Gates: $158 billion

He is one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of over $110 bn as of January 2023, making him the world’s fourth-wealthiest person. Sergey Brin is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, board members, and employees. Larry Page is the co-founder of Google, one of the world’s largest technology companies. He played a key role in developing Google’s search engine algorithm, which transformed internet search and made Google the most widely used search platform.

83 billionaires saw their wealth increase, and only three—Dhingras of Berger Paints, Joy Alukkas, and Piramal Enterprises’ Ajay Piramal—saw it decrease. Mukesh Ambani’s net worth waltzed past the $100 billion mark, perching him comfortably at the top spot with $119.5 billion net worth, Gautam Adani a close second with $116 billion net worth. While the number of billionaires fell amid the top 100 richest person in world COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the figure rebounded and grew again in 2021, falling somewhat by 2023. Together, the ten countries with the most billionaires have 1927 billionaires, about 73% of the global total. Of these countries, Hong Kong has the most billionaires per million people, with 8.698.

Real-Time Billionaires Methodology

His son Chase heads the company’s venture capital arm, which has invested in AI-based neurological diagnosis firm NeuraLight and smart supply chain firm Arkestro. Charles Koch has been chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, America’s second largest private company by revenue, since 1967. The diversified company has some $125 bn in revenues from businesses including pipelines, chemicals, software, automotive components and Dixie cups.

Sources

Established in 2009, the company was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018 amid funding problems. He has also shown an interest in flying car companies, investing in both Kitty Hawk and Opener, although Kitty Hawk ceased operations in 2022. In 2006, the company purchased YouTube, the top platform for user-submitted videos.

In recent years he has devoted more time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created in 1997 to address the biggest health and education issues of our time. Steve Ballmer is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Buffett is a prominent philanthropist and co-founder of The Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charity. He has pledged to give over 99% of his wealth to causes primarily through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other family charities.

1. Dell stock has roughly tripled since March last year to $119, valuing the company at over $80 billion, as investors wager it will be a key beneficiary from the AI boom.
2. Jensen Huang cofounded graphics-chip maker Nvidia in 1993, and has served as its CEO and president since inception.
3. While attending Stanford University in 1995, Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the idea of improving Internet data extraction.
4. Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking algorithm for Google.
5. As the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon leads all product design, engineering and global manufacturing of the company’s electric vehicles, battery products and solar energy products.

All but one of them have grown richer this year, adding a net $890 billion to their collective fortunes. Walmart ($762 billion), Eli Lilly ($740 billion), and JPMorgan ($675 billion) are all worth significantly less than that. Then again, wealth for some without a good measure of equality for everyone is problematic, to say the least. Low-income workers, often migrants, living in some very wealthy nations suddenly found themselves unemployed, homeless and stranded without much of a safety net. Many less affluent nations, in the meantime, bent over backwards to take care of all those in need during the crisis.

Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. Bernard Arnault founded LVMH, a company that acquired various French fashion brands such as Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Moët and Hennessy. The luxury conglomerate acquired Tiffany more recently, and is among the largest companies in Europe by market capitalization.

The founding of Facebook involved Zuckerberg in multiple lawsuits regarding the creation and ownership of the website. Blue Origin is a private aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000 with the goal of making space travel more accessible and eventually enabling millions to live and work in space. There’s been a huge fluctuation in the net worth of these billionaires in the past year. All the statistics given in this article in regard to individuals’ net worth estimates were originally sourced from Forbes.

Oracle has acquired numerous large companies over its history, such as Sun Microsystems and Cerner. Their immense wealth is built upon owning massively successful companies that are among the leaders in their respective industries. While they’ve generally worked in their businesses, their real wealth comes from the ownership of those companies. Here are the world’s 10 richest people and some of their key investments, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as of Jan. 5, 2025. The source defines wealth as a snapshot of a person’s total wealth using stock prices.

Bill Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, bgC3, and TerraPower. Samuel Robson Walton is an American billionaire heir to the fortune of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. He is the eldest son of Helen Walton and Sam Walton, and was chairman of Walmart from 1992 to 2015. He is also the principal owner of the National Football League (NFL)’s Denver Broncos.

He has also worked on personal projects, including a private airship company focused on exploring sustainable aviation. Brin served as Google’s president of technology and later as the president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. While he stepped down from an active leadership role in 2019, he remains a major shareholder and board member, shaping the company’s strategic direction. Bernard Arnault is the chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate. LVMH owns prestigious brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, and Moët & Chandon, among many others.

But this compensation does not influence the information we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you. Many billionaires can borrow against their wealth, which allows them to avoid selling stock and deferring taxes on unrealized capital gains. Additionally, they can use various tax deductions to offset reported income, enabling some to pay little or no income tax in recent years.