Who are the top 10 richest people in the world?*
*As of November 1, 2024 at 12 a.m. ET
1. Elon Musk
2. Larry Ellison
3. Jeff Bezos
4. Mark Zuckerberg
5. Bernard Arnault
6. Larry Page
7. Warren Buffett
8. Sergey Brin
9. Amancio Ortega
10. Steve Ballmer
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $263.8 billion
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, X (Twitter)
Age: 53
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: U.S.
Musk is CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX; chairman and CTO of social media company X, formerly known as Twitter; and founder of artificial intelligence firm xAI. He owns 13% of Tesla stock and has pledged some of his stock as collateral for loans. The electric car maker’s shareholders voted in June in favor of Musk keeping nearly $50 billion of performance based stock options in what a Delaware judge had earlier called “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets,” when she voided the award this January. But the matter won’t be resolved anytime soon. A lengthy appeal of the Delaware ruling is likely to follow. Until Musk receives those options, Forbes will continue to discount the Tesla options from the pay package by 50%.
In the past month, Musk’s fortune fell by $6.7 billion as Tesla shares sagged 4%.
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 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. Its market capitalization soared during 2020 and 2021. In September 2021, Musk became the world’s richest person. In November 2021, his fortune peaked at a whopping $320 billion. Musk was also the world’s richest person for most of 2022—until December 2022, when a drop in Tesla’s share price pushed down the value of his fortune. 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, after his startup xAI raised $6 billion from private investors at a $24 billion valuation. He owns an estimated 60% of the company.
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Jamel Toppin for forbes
2. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $204.8 billion
Source: Oracle
Age: 80
Residence: Woodside, California
Citizenship: U.S.
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. Over the years Oracle has made a series of large acquisitions, including buying Sun Microsystems in 2010 for $7.4 billion.
In 2012, Ellison bought 98% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. He also owns homes in California and Nevada. Ellison invested in Tesla and served on the board of the car company from 2018 through August 2022.
Shares of Oracle fell 1.5% in the past month, shaving $3.2 billion off Ellison’s fortune. He narrowly maintains his No. 2 ranking, with just $500 million separating him and No. 3 Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos
Michael Prince for Forbes
3. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $204.3 billion
Source: Amazon
Age: 60
Residence: Miami, Florida
Citizenship: U.S.
Jeff Bezos created e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 and ran it as CEO until July 2021 (he remains chairman); that same month he went to space on a rocket built by private rocket company Blue Origin, which he founded and has funded with billions of dollars.
His fortune remained unchanged, ending October at an estimated $204.3 billion–right where it was at the beginning of October.
In the final days of October, Bezos drew scrutiny and reportedly lost a couple hundred thousand subscribers to The Washington Post, which he owns, after directing the paper’s editorial page not to endorse a presidential candidate ahead of the November 5 election.
Before founding Amazon.com in his garage in Seattle, he 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’ list of the World’s Billionaires from 2018 through 2021; he dropped to second richest on the 2022 billionaires list.
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 just under 10% of the company. Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes calculates that he has sold more than $27 billion worth of his stock. Through his Bezos Expeditions he has invested in an array of companies, including Airbnb and software firm Workday.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $196.3 billion
Source: Meta (Facebook)
Age: 40
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Zuckerberg cofounded Facebook—now called Meta Platforms—when he was a student at Harvard University in 2004. It has grown to be the world’s largest social network. The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which it acquired and greatly expanded. Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, took the company public in 2012 and still owns about 13% of it.
Zuckerberg’s net worth fell by $1.7 billion, the result of a less than 1% downturn in Meta shares for the month of October. The social media giant reported third quarter earnings on October 30 and said it projected capital expenditures would grow significantly in 2025, which investors apparently didn’t like; shares fell about 4% on October 31.
Bernard Arnault
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
5. Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $169.3 billion
Source: LVMH/ luxury goods
Age: 75
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of luxury goods group LVMH, maintains his No. 5 rank despite a 13% contraction in his fortune this past month, a $26.2 billion drop. In mid-October the company reported quarterly earnings, which were depressed by ongoing weak demand in China.
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. Earlier this year, Arnault nominated two of his sons—Alexandre and Frédéric—to the board of LVMH. His daughter Delphine, who runs Dior, and son Antoine, already sit on the board. In June he also named son Frédéric as head of LVMH 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.
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Getty Images
6. Larry Page
Net worth: $142.1 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Page moves into No. 6 richest spot this month, up from No. 7 in early October, buoyed by an uptick in Alphabet shares following a strong third-quarter earnings report.
Page cofounded search engine Google with fellow Stanford PhD student Sergey Brin in 1998 and served as CEO until 2001 and from 2011 to 2015. He now serves as a board member of Google’s parent Alphabet and continues to be a controlling shareholder. His fortune rose by $1.8 billion during September.
Page was a founding investor in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018.
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TIMOTHY ARCHIBALD FOR FORBES
7. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $142 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 94
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: U.S.
Buffett’s fortune dropped by $2.9 billion during October and his rank fell one notch to No. 7 from No. 6 last month as Berkshire Hathaway shares drifted 2% lower during October.
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time. He runs investing conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen. The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.
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 give $59.3 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and foundations run by his children and one started by his late first wife. That includes $5.3 billion in June, which helped knock him down in the ranks to No. 10 in early July for the first time in years. But since then, his rank has rebounded.
8. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $135.9 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Brin advanced one rank to No. 8 from a month ago on the strength of Alphabet shares; his fortune rose by $3.9 billion to an estimated nearly $136 billion.
Brin cofounded search engine Google with fellow Stanford computer science PhD candidate Larry Page. Like Page, he currently serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder. His net worth increased by $1.6 billion during September.
Brin 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.
He’s also become the largest individual donor to research on Parkinson’s disease, giving $1.25 billion to various groups, including a group of collaborative academics spearheaded by his team called Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s.
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fotopress/GettyImages
9. Amancio Ortega
Net worth: $127.7 billion
Source: Inditex/Zara
Age: 88
Residence: La Coruna, Spain
Citizenship: Spain
The fast fashion pioneer cofounded Inditex, known for its Zara chain of stores, in 1975 with his ex-wife, Rosalia Mera (d. 2013). Ortega ranked No. 6 richest in the world in 2020, with a $55 billion fortune. He ranked No. 13 on Forbes’ lists of the World’s Billionaires in both 2023 and 2024. An uptick in Inditex shares in September landed Ortega back among the top ten richest for the first time in years. In the past month, he fell from No. 8 to No. 9 as shares of Inditex declined; his fortune shrank by an estimated $5.4 billion. He owns about 60% of Madrid-listed Inditex.
10. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $121 billion
Source: Microsoft, Clippers, investments
Age: 68
Residence: Hunts Point, Washington
Citizenship: U.S.
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 team for $2 billion—a record high for an NBA team at the time. Forbes now values the team at $5.5 billion. The new home for the Clippers, the Intuit Dome in Inglewood—not far from Los Angeles International Airport—opened in August 2024.
Ballmer’s fortune fell by $4.5 billion in October primarily due to weaker Microsoft shares, which fell about 5% during the month.
Ballmer and his wife Connie are among the 25 most generous philanthropists in America.
