There are supposedly 2,755 billionaires on the planet as of 2021, with a combined projected net worth of $13.1 trillion. The top 10 richest persons in the world own $1,153 billion, or nearly 8.8%, of this total, which is remarkable given that they make up just around 0.36% of billionaires. The Forbes World’s Billionaires List has listed the top 10 wealthiest people as of the article’s update date in September 2021, which is shown below.
1. Jeff Bezos
- Age: 57
- Residence: Seattle
- Founder and Executive Chair: Amazon (AMZN)
- Net Worth: $177 billion
- Amazon Ownership Stake: 11% ($178 billion)
- Other Assets: Blue Origin ($7.15 billion private assets), The Washington Post ($250 million private assets), and $13.4 billion in cash
Amazon.com was established by Jeff Bezos in a Seattle garage in 1994, not long after he left the famous hedge company D.E. Shaw. Actually, when he first proposed the idea of an online bookshop to his old employer David E. Shaw, the latter turned it down.
Although Amazon.com originally focused on selling books, it has now expanded to become a one-stop shop for just about anything and is perhaps the biggest retailer in the world. In any case, it is difficult to contest the corporation’s claim to be “Earth’s most customer-centric organization.” Some of its unanticipated growths, like as the acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 and the introduction of its own line of branded over-the-counter medications in August 2017, show the company’s trend of ongoing diversification.
As lockdowns caused shoppers to stay at home, the demand for online shopping increased in 2020, driving up the price of Amazon’s stock. Bezos transferred to his new position as the company’s executive chair on July 5, 2021, and left his position as CEO of the massive e-commerce company.
Bezos first made Amazon publicly available in 1997, and in 1999, he overtook Bill Gates as the first person to have a net worth of $100 billion. The aerospace firm Blue Origin, The Washington Post, which he acquired in 2013, and the 10,000-year clock, also known as the Long Now, are among Bezos’s other endeavors. Blue Origin’s first successful crewed flight was carried out on July 20, 2021, by Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen. They reached a height of slightly over 62 miles before making a safe landing.
2. Elon Musk
- Age: 50
- Residence: Austin, Texas
- Co-founder and CEO: Tesla (TSLA)
- Net Worth: $151 billion
- Tesla Ownership Stake: 20% ($125 billion)
- Other Assets: Space Exploration Technologies ($29.8 billion private assets) and The Boring Company ($101 million private assets)
Over the years, Elon Musk has been involved with a number of various businesses. Musk had planned to attend Stanford University, but he postponed enrollment to start Zip2, one of the first internet navigation systems. The money earned from this venture was subsequently used to launch X.com, an online payment platform that eventually evolved into PayPal. Musk has kept his position as CEO and principal designer of his third project, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), which intends to make space travel more accessible, even though both of these systems were ultimately sold to other businesses.
Musk was retrospectively recognized as a cofounder of Tesla Motors (now Tesla) and appointed to his present role as CEO of the electric car firm in 2004 after becoming one of the company’s primary investors. Tesla manufactures energy storage devices, automobile accessories, merchandise, and solar power systems thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. In addition to its line of electric cars, which includes sedans, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and the “Cybertruck” announced in 2019, the company also makes energy storage devices.
2020 saw a meteoric spike in Tesla’s stock price, which increased by 705% from the beginning of the year to mid-December. That same month, it became the biggest corporation to date to join the S&P 500.
In 2016, Musk launched two further businesses, Neuralink and The Boring Company, with the former having him as CEO. In order to assist those with paralysis and maybe enable users to mentally control their computers and mobile devices, Neuralink is creating brain-machine interface devices. The Boring Company, on the other hand, creates boring machines to build tunnels for subterranean public transit networks, which would lessen traffic congestion in large cities. It also marketed a portable flamethrower for a short while.
3. Bernard Arnault
- Age: 72
- Residence: Paris
- CEO and Chair: LVMH (LVMUY)
- Net Worth: $150 billion
- Christian Dior Ownership Stake: 97.5% ($133 billion)
- Other Assets: Moelis & Company equity ($23.3 billion public assets), Hermès equity ($2.23 billion public assets), Carrefour equity ($900 million public assets), and $9.48 billion in cash
The head and CEO of LVMH, the biggest manufacturer of luxury goods in the world, is French native Bernard Arnault. Some of the most well-known brands on the planet are owned by this company, including Sephora, Marc Jacobs, Hennessey, Louis Vuitton, and many more. The holding firm that owns 41.25% of LVMH, Christian Dior SE, is where the majority of his fortune truly originates. Through his family-owned holding business, Groupe Arnault SE, he holds shares in Christian Dior SE as well as an extra 6.2% in LVMH.
Engineer by training, Arnault showed his commercial acumen while working at Ferret-Savinel, the construction company his father owned and which he would eventually take over in 1971. In 1979, he changed Ferret-Savinel into Férinel Inc., a real estate business.
For another six years, Arnault served as the chairman of Férinel. In 1984, he bought and rebuilt the Financière Agache company, selling all of its properties except for Christian Dior and Le Bon Marché.
In 1987, he received an invitation to invest in LVMH; two years later, he was named the company’s largest shareholder, board chair, and CEO.
4. Bill Gates
- Age: 65
- Residence: Medina, Washington
- Cofounder: Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)
- Net Worth: $124 billion
- Microsoft Ownership Stake: 1.3% ($31.2 billion)
- Other Assets: Republic Services equity ($13.5 billion public assets), John Deere equity ($10 billion public assets), Canadian National Railway equity ($9.14 billion public assets), Ecolab equity ($6.92 billion public assets), Givaudan equity ($5.56 billion public assets), FEMSA equity ($2.42 billion public assets), Waste Management equity ($2.26 billion public assets), Berkshire Hathaway equity ($1.87 billion public assets), Diageo equity ($1.77 billion public assets), Sika AG equity ($1.5 billion public assets), Arch Capital Group equity ($1.42 billion public assets), AutoNation equity ($1.33 billion public assets), Liberty Global equity ($251 million public assets), Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas equity ($200 million public assets), Otter Tail Corporation equity ($190 million public assets), Western Asset Inflation-Linked Opportunities & Income Fund equity ($180 million public assets), Western Asset Inflation-Linked Income Fund ($69.9 million public assets), and $62.6 billion in cash
In 1975, while still a student at Harvard, Bill Gates joined his boyhood buddy Paul Allen in creating new software for the first microcomputers. After the success of this effort, Gates left Harvard in his junior year and later co-founded Microsoft with Allen.
Microsoft is not just the biggest software corporation in the world; it also manufactures its own line of personal computers, releases books through Microsoft Press, offers email services through its Exchange server, and sells video gaming consoles and related accessories. Gates was formerly in charge of designing Microsoft’s software, but in 2008 he switched to the position of chair. In 2004, he became a member of Berkshire Hathaway’s board. His resignation from both boards was effective March 13, 2020.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he and his ex-wife, Melinda Gates, co-chair, was formed in 2000 when Gates’ two charitable organizations, the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, were combined. He has spent billions fighting polio and malaria through the charity. In 2014, he also made a $50 million donation to the Ebola virus’s fight. The organization has already spent more than $1.8 billion by 2021 to fight the COVID-19 epidemic.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett introduced the Giving Pledge in 2010, an initiative to get wealthy people to pledge to give the majority of their money to charitable organizations.
5. Mark Zuckerberg
- Age: 37
- Residence: Palo Alto, Calif.
- Co-founder, CEO, and Chair: Facebook (FB)
- Net Worth: $97 billion
- Facebook Ownership Stake: 13% ($138 billion)
- Other Assets: $3.35 billion in cash and $225 million in real estate
In 2004, while a student at Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. In order to devote all of his attention to his expanding company, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard as Facebook started to be utilized at other campuses. As of Q1 2021, Facebook has more over 2.8 billion monthly active users under Zuckerberg’s leadership.
The largest social networking site in the world, Facebook allows users to make personal profiles, connect with friends and family, join or start groups, and do a lot more. Since using the website is free, the majority of the business’s income comes from advertising.
Other brands that are owned by Facebook (the company) include the photo-sharing app Instagram, which it acquired in 2012; the cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp; the maker of virtual reality headsets, Oculus; Workplace, its platform for business connectivity; Portal, its line of video calling devices; and Novi, its digital wallet for the Diem payment system.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was established in 2015 by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, with each of them acting as co-CEO. Their nonprofit organization works to improve access to and the caliber of education, to reform the criminal justice and immigration systems in the United States, to increase housing affordability, and ultimately to eradicate all illnesses.
6. Warren Buffett
- Age: 91
- Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
- CEO: Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
- Net Worth: $96 billion
- Berkshire Hathaway Ownership Stake: 38.001% ($103 billion total)
- Other Assets: Wells Fargo & Co. equity ($76.6 million public assets), U.S. Bancorp equity ($50.2 million public assets), Seritage Growth Properties equity ($38 million public assets), and $1.10 billion in cash
Warren Buffett, the most well-known living value investor, filed his first tax return in 1944 when he was 14 years old, disclosing his profits from his childhood paper route. In 1962, he made his first investment in Berkshire Hathaway, a textile business, and by 1965, he had acquired the majority of the company’s shares. In 1967, he extended the business to include investments and insurance. Currently worth half a trillion dollars, Berkshire Hathaway’s shares traded for more than $410,000 per share in the middle of 2021.
Buffett, widely regarded as the “Oracle of Omaha,” amassed the majority of his wealth by investing in shares of businesses with transparent business models. Buffett has chosen a more conservative approach, only purchasing from well-established firms that are simpler to grasp, such as IBM and Apple, while many investors have been pouring money into tech businesses. He is a well-known opponent of Bitcoin. Over the years, Buffett has also directly acquired a sizable number of businesses, such as Dairy Queen, Duracell, GEICO, and Kraft Heinz.
Buffett has used a large portion of his money for causes other than investment. Buffett donated $41 billion between 2006 and 2020, with the majority going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or his kids’ organizations. Together with Bill Gates, Buffett introduced the Giving Pledge in 2010.
7. Larry Ellison
- Age: 77
- Residence: Lanai, Hawaii
- Co-founder, CTO, and Chair: Oracle (ORCL)
- Net Worth: $93 billion
- Oracle Ownership Stake: 35.4% ($74.3 billion)
- Other Assets: Tesla equity ($11.1 billion public assets) and $16.6 billion in cash
Larry Ellison traveled to California and worked as a computer programmer for several businesses throughout the years after leaving the University of Chicago in 1966. First, in 1973, he worked for Ampex, a maker of electronics, when he first met his future business partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner. Ellison joined Precision Instruments three years later and was appointed vice president of research and development.
Together with Oates and Miner, Ellison established Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. Two years later, Oracle, the first commercial relational database application to make use of Structured Query Language, was published. Because of the database program’s success, SDL changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982. Ellison further joined Tesla’s board in December 2018.
The Oracle Exadata computing platform, along with other software like Java and Linux, is offered by Oracle, the second-largest software provider, which also offers a wide range of cloud computing applications. The company has also expanded through the purchase of a number of significant firms, including corporate infrastructure software supplier BEA Systems in 2008, customer relationship management applications provider Siebel in 2006, and hardware and software developer Sun Microsystems in 2009.
Over the past ten years, Ellison has invested millions in luxury real estate, mostly in California. For $300 million, Ellison perhaps made his most stunning purchase: the practically whole Hawaiian island of Lanai. He later developed a hydroponic farm and opulent resort there. Over the years, he has also contributed millions of dollars to philanthropic organizations, mostly supporting medical research. Ellison most recently donated $200 million to the University of Southern California in 2016 to build a new cancer research facility.
8. Larry Page
- Age: 48
- Residence: Palo Alto, California
- Co-founder and Board Member: Alphabet (GOOG)
- Net Worth: $91.5 billion
- Alphabet Ownership Stake: 6% ($115 billion total)
- Other Assets: $13.8 billion in cash
Like numerous other software millionaires on this list, Larry Page’s claim to fame began in a dormitory during his time in college. Page and his buddy Sergey Brin came up with the concept of enhancing data extraction capabilities when surfing the Internet in 1995 while both were students at Stanford University. Due to its capability to examine “backing connections,” the team created a novel sort of search engine technology they called “Backrub.” From there, Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Page led the business as CEO until his resignation in 2001.
With more than 70% of all online searches conducted globally going via Google, it’s one of the biggest Internet search engines in the world. The largest platform for user-submitted videos, YouTube, was acquired by Google (the firm) in 2006 as part of its expansion. Then, in 2008, the first smartphone running the Android operating system was made available. Android Inc. had initially created the platform before Google bought the business in 2005. Today, Alphabet, a holding corporation for which Page served as CEO from 2015 to 2019, owns Google.
A business that explores space and mines asteroids, Planetary Resources, also counts Page among its initial investors. The business, which was founded in 2009, was bought by blockchain developer ConsenSys in 2018 due to finance issues. Having invested in both Kitty Hawk and Opener, he has also demonstrated an interest in “flying vehicle” businesses.
9. Sergey Brin
- Age: 48
- Residence: Los Altos, California
- Co-founder and Board Member: Alphabet (GOOG)
- Net Worth: $89 billion
- Alphabet Ownership Stake: 5% ($110.1 billion total)
- Other Assets: $13.9 billion in cash
Comparing Google to the other businesses on this list, it stands out since its co-founders’ overall fortune is very comparable. The way Sergey Brin became involved with Google is comparable to that of Larry Page. Brin and Page co-founded the business in 1998, and Brin ran it as co-president until Eric Schmidt took over as CEO in 2001. Similar to how Brin served as president of Alphabet until stepping down in 2019 and handing the reins to Sundar Pichai as CEO, after forming the holding company in 2015.
Google is not just a very well-known search engine, but it also provides a collection of online programs and services called Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and more. Google sells a wide range of technological products in addition to software, such as its Pixel smartphones, Pixelbook PCs and tablets, Nest smart home products, and Stadia gaming platform.
Brin devoted a large portion of 2019 to X, Alphabet’s “moonshot” research facility that produced ground-breaking products like the Waymo self-driving vehicles and the Google Glass smart eyewear. Additionally, he has contributed millions of dollars to the hunt for a Parkinson’s treatment and collaborated with The Michael J. Fox Foundation to develop novel medications that target LRRK2, one of the major hereditary causes of the condition.
10. Mukesh Ambani
- Age: 64
- Residence: Mumbai, India
- Chair and Managing Director: Reliance Industries
- Net Worth: $84.5 billion
- Reliance Industries Ownership Stake: 42% ($86.09 billion total)
- Other Assets: Mumbai residential property ($410 million private assets) and $975 million in cash
Dhirubhai Ambani started Reliance Industries in 1966 as a modest textile producer. Mukesh, the son of Dhirubhai, relocated to Palo Alto, California, in 1979 to enroll at Stanford Business School. A year later, Mukesh joined the board of Reliance Industries and came home at his father’s request to supervise the building of a new polyester factory. Mukesh stayed in India to oversee Reliance’s backward integration plan rather than returning to the United States to continue his academic career. He led the company’s initiatives to build and purchase a number of petrochemical facilities and oil refineries in the 1990s.
Dhirubhai died in 2002 after having a stroke. Due to the absence of a will, Mukesh and his brother Anil got into a fight about who would get what share of their father’s enterprise. Three years later, the siblings reached an agreement to divide the company, with Mukesh keeping control of the refining, petrochemicals, oil and gas, and textile activities. This settlement was mediated by their mother. The two brothers’ conflict didn’t totally subside as a result since they wouldn’t resolve their legal fight over the distribution of natural gas or cancel their non-compete agreements until 2010.
With the announcement of a $220 million agreement to share a fiber-optic network between their two firms in 2013, Mukesh and Anil appeared to put their differences behind them.
Under Mukesh’s direction, Reliance Industries built a number of very successful companies, notably Reliance Retail and the telecom firm Jio. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum Foundation Board, an elected Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States, a member of Bank of America’s Global Advisory Council, and a member of The Brookings Institution’s International Advisory Council.
The Bottom Line
You might need to develop into a technical inventor or a retail tycoon if you want to move a little bit closer to making Bloomberg’s list of the wealthiest billionaires. Or you may keep things straightforward and concentrate on value investment. The largest riches on this list, nevertheless, all began as fantastic ideas from individuals who had the imagination, motivation, and connections to make them succeed.