Top 10 Richest People in the World: The global economy, politics, and philanthropy are significantly influenced by billionaires. By 2023, there will be 2,640 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is the richest of them all. The people on this list are members of an even more exclusive group and have even more authority. A significant portion of the wealth of many technology giants’ founders is still invested in the businesses they founded.

To avoid selling stock and postpone (or eliminate for their heirs) paying taxes on unrealized capital gains, these billionaires can still borrow against their wealth. Certain individuals on this list have paid no income tax in recent years since multibillionaires can utilize a plethora of tax deductions to reduce their reported income. The wealthiest people’s net worth varies with the market values of the companies they own because a large portion of their wealth is invested in publicly traded stocks. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists the ten richest persons on the planet below. As of February 1, 2024, all numbers are up to date.

1. Elon Musk

• Age: 52
• Place of residence: USA
• Tesla’s CEO and co-founder
• $202 billion is net worth
• Tesla Owns $177 billion, or 13% of the Company.
• X Owns 79% of the Company ($8.37 billion)
• Additional Assets: The Boring Company ($3.33 billion private asset), Space Exploration Technologies ($71.2 billion private asset).

The richest man on the planet is Musk Elon. He was born in South Africa and attended a Canadian university initially, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania to finish his bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics. For two days, Musk skipped his classes at Stanford University’s graduate program in physics to launch Zip2, one of the first online navigation services. He reinvested a portion of the startup’s profits to create X.com, an online payment system that eBay (EBAY) eventually purchased and rebranded as PayPal Holdings (PYPL).7. Musk became a major contributor to Tesla Motors (now Tesla) in 2004 and used that experience to rise to the position of CEO at the electric vehicle manufacturer. In addition to producing electric cars, Tesla also produces solar power systems, car accessories, and energy storage devices, which it purchased from SolarCity in 2016. Furthermore, Musk serves as the CEO and chief engineer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a business that creates space launch rockets.

Tesla became the largest addition to the S&P 500 in December 2020. Elon Musk became the richest person in the world in January 2021, but his position has changed since then because of the value of Tesla.

In April 2022, Musk began a campaign to take X private, which culminated in a $44 billion buyout. Musk planned to finance the deal with $21 billion of his own money. Musk sold 9.6 million Tesla shares, or roughly $8.5 billion, before the takeover was announced.1011 Musk decided in July 2022 to back out of the acquisition. The company filed a lawsuit against Musk to force him to finish the takeover. Musk first filed a countersuit against the business, but he later changed his mind and said he would be willing to purchase it. With the deal’s official closing in October 2022, he now owns 79% of the business.

2. Bernard Arnault

• Residence: France
• Age: 74
• LVMH (LVMUY) is the CEO and chair. Its net worth is $183 billion.
• Christian Dior owns 97.5% of the company, or $140 billion in total.
• Other Assets: $14.8 billion in cash and equity in Moelis & Company ($28.4 billion in public assets).15

French national Bernard Arnault is chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company. LVMH brands include Sephora, Marc Jacobs, Hennessey, and Louis Vuitton.

Most of Arnault’s wealth comes from his sizable stake in Christian Dior SE, the holding company that owns 41.4% of LVMH. He owns shares of Christian Dior SE and 6.2% of LVMH through Groupe Familial Arnault, the holding company of his family.

Originally trained as an engineer, Arnault first demonstrated his business acumen while employed by his father at Ferret-Savinel, the construction company he eventually took over as CEO in 1971. In 1979, he changed Ferret-Savinel into Férinel Inc., a real estate company.

After taking over and restructuring luxury goods manufacturer Financière Agache in 1984, Arnault stayed in charge of the company for an additional six years before selling all of its holdings save Christian Dior and Le Bon Marché. In 1987, he received an invitation to invest in LVMH, and two years later, he rose to the position of CEO, chair of the board, and major shareholder.

3. Jeff Bezos

• Age: 60 years
• Residence: USA
• Amazon (AMZN) is the founder and executive chair.
• Its net worth is $180 billion, and it owns 10% ($153 billion) of the company.
• Other assets include $15.1 billion in cash, The Washington Post ($250 million), Koru ($500 million), Blue Origin ($11.2 billion), and other private assets.

Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com in a Seattle garage in 1994, not long after leaving the massive hedge fund D.E. Shaw. When he first proposed the concept of an online bookshop to David E. Shaw, his former supervisor, Shaw turned him down.

Amazon is predicted to surpass Walmart as the biggest retailer in the world by 2024, despite having begun as a book seller. Over time, it has transformed into a one-stop shop for everything under the sun. Some of Amazon’s unexpected expansions, like its acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 and its entry into the pharmacy industry that same year, demonstrate the company’s pattern of constant diversification. As part of their divorce settlement, Bezos gave MacKenzie Scott, his ex-wife, 4% of Amazon, which he owned as much as 16% of the company in 2019. Due to the increased demand for online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Amazon’s share price increased by 76%. Bezos became the executive chair of the e-commerce behemoth after leaving his position as CEO on July 5, 2021.

After taking Amazon public for the first time in 1997, Bezos went on to become the first person to have a net worth of more than $100 billion since Bill Gates in 1999. The aerospace company Blue Origin, The Washington Post (which he acquired in 2013), and the 10,000-year clock, also referred to as the Long Now, are among Bezos’s other endeavours. The first crewed flight of Blue Origin was successfully completed on July 20, 2021, by Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen. The aircraft reached a height of over 66 miles before making a safe landing. In the same month, Bezos’s wealth reached its peak at $213 billion. He spent $500 million purchasing the superyacht Koru in 2023.

4. Bill Gates

• Residence: United States;
• Age: 68
• Microsoft (MSFT) is a co-founder. Its net worth is $144 billion, and it owns 1.4% ($25.7 billion) of the company.
• Other Assets: cash of $69.1 billion and billions in several other businesses

In 1975, Bill Gates joined his childhood friend Paul Allen at Harvard University to work on creating new software for the first microcomputers. After the success of this project, Gates left Harvard in his junior year and co-founded Microsoft with Allen.

Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, also makes a range of personal computers, offers email services via its exchange server, and retails video game consoles and related accessories. It has made significant recent investments in cloud services.

In 2008, Gates moved up to become the board chair from CEO of the company. In 2004, he became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway. On March 13, 2020, he resigned from both boards.

Cascade Investment LLC holds a significant portion of Bill Gates’ net worth. Private investment vehicle Cascade owns equities such as Deere (DE), Republic Services (RSG), and Canadian National Railway (CNR), in addition to real estate and energy-related private holdings.

5. Mark Zuckerberg

• Age: 39
• Residence: United States
• Meta Platforms (META): CEO and Chair;
• Net Worth: $141 billion;
• Ownership Stake: 13% ($136 billion total)
• Other Assets: Cash of $4.35 billion

While attending Harvard University in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook (now Meta) with fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. When Facebook started to be used at other colleges, Zuckerberg left Harvard to concentrate solely on his expanding company. Zuckerberg currently serves as the chair and CEO of Meta, an organization with 3 billion monthly active users as of Q2 2023.

The largest social networking site in the world is called Facebook. Since the website is free to use, advertising accounts for the majority of the business’s income.

Meta is also home to some other brands, such as the photo-sharing app Instagram, which it purchased in 2012; the virtual reality headset manufacturer Oculus and the cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp, both purchased in 2014; Workplace, its platform for enterprise connectivity; and Portal, its range of video-calling devices.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was established in 2015 by Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, who also serves as co-CEO. Their nonprofit works to improve society by using technology to address issues like increasing access to and quality of education, changing the criminal justice and immigration systems in the United States, lowering the cost of housing, and eventually curing all diseases.

6. Steve Ballmer

• Age: 67
• Residence: USA
• Owner: Los Angeles Clippers
• $138 billion net worth; 4% ownership stake held by Microsoft ($127 billion total)
• Additional Assets: $3.80 billion in cash, The Forum ($400 million), Intuit Dome ($2 billion), Los Angeles Clippers ($4.56 billion), and other private assets.

After Bill Gates persuaded him to leave Stanford University’s MBA programme, Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980. He was the 30th employee of Microsoft. Ballmer succeeded Gates as the CEO of Microsoft in 2000. He remained in that role until resigning in 2014. Ballmer was in charge of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype in 2011.

Ballmer is the largest individual shareholder of Microsoft, holding an estimated 4% of the software giant. Shortly after leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, Ballmer paid $2 billion to acquire the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

When Ballmer and Bill Gates were both students at Harvard, they shared a dorm and a floor. When Ballmer began pushing the tech company into hardware during his tenure as CEO—such as the Surface tablet and the Windows mobile phone—their brotherly relationship soured.

7. Warren Buffett:

• Age: 93 years
• Residence: USA
• CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A),
• net worth of $128 billion,
• 15% ownership stake in Berkshire Hathaway ($126 billion)54
• Other Assets: Cash of $1.38 billion55

At the age of 14, Warren Buffett, the most well-known value investor alive, filed his first tax return in 1944, reporting earnings from his childhood paper route. In 1962, he began purchasing shares in the textile company Berkshire Hathaway, and by 1965, he had assumed the majority of the company’s ownership. In 1967, Buffett increased the company’s holdings by adding insurance and other investments.

Often referred to as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is a buy-and-hold investor who amassed wealth by purchasing undervalued businesses. Berkshire Hathaway has made investments in sizable, well-known businesses more recently. Along with consumer goods, its portfolio of fully owned subsidiaries includes interests in railroads, energy distribution, insurance, and insurance.

Buffett has made charitable giving a major part of his fortune. He donated $41 billion between 2006 and 2020, primarily to his children’s charities and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Alongside Bill Gates, Buffett introduced the Giving Pledge in 2010.

Now 93 years old, Buffett still serves as CEO, but in 2021 he stated that his likely successor would be Gregory Abel, head of Berkshire’s non-insurance operations.

8. Larry Page

• Age: 50
• Residence: USA
• Co-founder and board member of Alphabet (GOOG);
• net worth of $127 billion;
• ownership stake in Alphabet: 6% ($109.8 billion total);
• Cash of $17.4 billion is held in other assets.

Larry Page began his journey to fame and fortune in a college dorm room, much like a number of the tech billionaires on this list. In 1995, while studying at Stanford University, Page and his friend Sergey Brin had the idea to enhance Internet data extraction. The two created Backrub, a new search engine technology named for its capacity to evaluate links pointing to a page.

Following that, Page and Brin founded Google in 1998, with Page leading the business as CEO twice: once until 2001 and once more from 2011 to 2019.

With over 92% of all search queries coming from Google, it is the most popular search engine worldwide. The business bought YouTube, the leading website for user-submitted videos, in 2006.

Google released the Android mobile phone operating system in 2008 following its acquisition of Android in 2005. In 2015, Google underwent a reorganization and became a division of the holding company Alphabet. Page was one of the first investors in Planetary Resources, a space exploration and mining firm focused on asteroids. Amidst financial difficulties, the 2009-founded business was purchased by blockchain company ConsenSys in 2018. In addition, he has invested in Kitty Hawk and Opener, two firms that make flying cars, although Kitty Hawk ceased operations in 2022.

9. Larry Ellison

• Age: 79
• Residence: USA
• co-founder, chair, and chief technology officer of Oracle (ORCL);
• net worth of $126 billion;
• ownership stake of Oracle: 42%+ ($93.7 billion)
• Other Assets: $23.6 billion in cash and Tesla stock ($8.43 billion in public assets).

In New York City, Larry Ellison was born to a 19-year-old single mother. Ellison left the University of Chicago in 1966 and went to work as a computer programmer in California. He met future business partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner when he started working at the electronics company Ampex in 1973. After working for Precision Instruments for three years, Ellison became vice president of research and development.

Along with Oates and Miner, Ellison established Software Development Laboratories in 1977. The first commercial relational database program to use Structured Query Language, Oracle, was released by the company two years later. Due to the success of the database program, SDL renamed itself Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982. Ellison left Oracle as CEO in 2014, ending a 37-year tenure. He became a board member of Tesla in December 2018 and left in June 2022.

The second-biggest software company in the world, Oracle offers a broad range of cloud computing applications, Linux and Java code, and the Oracle Exadata computing platform. Over the years, Oracle has acquired many sizable businesses, including Sun Microsystems and Cerner. Ellison has made medical research the focus of his charitable giving. He donated $200 million to a new cancer research center at the University of Southern California in 2016. The Oracle Team USA sailing team, which took home the America’s Cup racing series in 2010 and 2013, was supported by Ellison.

10. Sergey Brin

• Age: 50
• Residence: USA
• Alphabet (GOOG) is the co-founder and board member.
• Net worth is $121 billion, with a 6% ownership stake ($103.2 billion total) in Alphabet.
• Other Assets: Cash of $17.5 billion

Born in Moscow, Russia, Sergey Brin moved to the United States in 1979 with his family when he was six years old. When Eric Schmidt took over as CEO of Google in 2001, Brin, who had co-founded the company with Larry Page in 1998, was named president of technology. Following the company’s founding in 2015, he maintained the same position at Alphabet, retiring in 2019 to make way for Sundar Pichai as CEO.

Apart from being the most popular search engine on the internet, Google also provides a set of online tools and services called Google Workspace. These include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Meet, Google Calendar, and more. Along with a wide range of electronics, Google also sells Nest smart home appliances, Stadia gaming platform, and Pixel laptops, tablets, and smartphones.