Elon Musk is the richest person in the
world, a title he reclaimed in late May 2024.
His fortune rose by $3 billion over the past
month. Bernard Arnault remains the world's
No. 3 richest, unchanged from a month
ago.
Elon Musk remains at No. 1. But the ups and
downs of tech stocks shuffled the ranks of
others among the world’s top 10 richest, with
Larry Ellison falling a notch while Bill Gates
overtook the Google cofounders.
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Elon Musk holds his spot as the world's
richest person.
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Key Takeaways
Elon Musk is the richest person in the
world, a title he reclaimed in late May
2024. His fortune rose by $3 billion
over the past month.
Bernard Arnault remains the world’s
No. 3 richest, unchanged from a
month ago. He had been the world’s
richest person from February through
late May this year.
Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway
ranks No. 6, up from No. 7 in early
August.
9/10 of the richest people in the
world are Americans, including Jeff
Bezos, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates.
All of the top ten richest people as of
September 1 are men, and each of
them is worth $100 billion or more.
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For the second month in a row, gyrating tech
stocks rearranged the ranking of more than
half of the world’s ten richest people. As a
result, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg swapped
places with Larry Ellison to beome the world’s
fourth richest person again, Warren Buffett
moved ahead of Google cofounder Larry Page,
and Bill Gates overtook both of the Google
cofounders to become the world’s seventh
richest person—up two spots in a month—as
of the stroke of midnight on September 1.
Elon Musk maintained his spot as the world’s
richest person, worth an estimated $243.7
billion, $3 billion more than a month ago
following an increase in the value of rocket
firm SpaceX. Lately, Musk has been a vocal
critic of a Brazilian Supreme Court judge over
a ruling that froze bank accounts for his
Starlink satellite internet business. Regulators
in Brazil moved to shut down X on August 30
to comply with a Brazilian judge’s order.
The biggest gainer in the past month was
Zuckerberg. His fortune rose by nearly $14
billion to an estimated $180.5 billion as Meta
Platforms’ shares climbed 9% during August.
That gain moved him ahead of Oracle
Chairman Larry Ellison to rank the Meta CEO
as No. 4 richest in the world. He’s traded
places with Ellison several times throughout
the year so far.
The biggest loser of this elite cohort in the
past month was Amazon chairman Jeff
Bezos. His fortune fell by $7.8 billion to $197
billion due to a drop in Amazon shares.
Despite the decline, Bezos held onto his rank
as No. 2 richest. But the gap between Musk
and Bezos widened to nearly $47 billion on
September 1, from just under $36 billion at
the start of August.
Gates’s move to No. 7 richest—up from No. 9
a month ag0—was partly due to a drop in the
price of Google-parent Alphabet shares, which
shaved a bit more than $6 billion off the
fortunes of Google cofounders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, now ranked No. 8 and 9,
respectively
Together the world’s top 10 richest are worth
a combined $1.66 trillion—about $31 billion
more than a month ago.
Forbes has been keeping track of the world’s
billionaires since 1987. In April we
found 2,781 of them for our annual list.
Here are the 10 richest people on Earth as of
September 1, 2024 at 12 a.m. Eastern time,
according to Forbes. Stock prices fluctuate
routinely, so these net worths may change on
a daily basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes
on our Real Time list of billionaires .
Who are the top 10 richest people in the
world?*
1. Elon Musk
2. Jeff Bezos
3. Bernard Arnault
4. Mark Zuckerberg
5. Larry Ellison
6. Warren Buffett
7. Bill Gates
8. Larry Page
9. Sergey Brin
10. Steve Ballmer
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $243.7 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 willcontinue to
discount the Tesla options from the pay
package by 50%. In the meantime, Musk’s
fortune rose by $3 billion in the past month,
partly due to the increased value of his 42%
stake in rocket firm SpaceX.
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 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.
2. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $197 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
fell by $7.8 billion during August 2024 as
Amazon’s shares declined about 2.4%.
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.
3. Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $189.7 billion
Source: LVMH/ luxury goods
Age: 75
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of luxury
goods group LVMH, continues to rank No. 3
richest, despite a $10.2 billion increase in his
fortune to $189.7 billion during August as a
result of a 3% rise in the LVMH share price.
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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4. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $180.5 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. Shares of Meta rose 9% in
August, lifting Zuckerberg’s fortune by $13.9
billion over the course of the month. He rose
to the world’s No. 4 richest from No. 5 at the
beginning of August.
Meta has been investing heavily in AI and the
metaverse. Zuckerberg talked to Forbes in
September 2023 about these two big bets
ahead of the company turning 20.
5. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $174.7 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.
During February 2024, In late July, Ellison
moved into the No. 4 richest spot, but was
overtaken by Zuckerberg in late August.
As of September 1, Ellison ranks No. 5 with a
$174.7 billion fortune. That’s up by $2 billion
from the previous month.
6. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $149.9 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 94
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 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, shares of Berkshire Hathaway
have ticked up. Buffett moved from No. 7 on
August 1 to a current No. 6 richest in the
world. His fortune fattened by $11.6 billion in
the past month as Berkshire Hathaway A
shares climbed 8.5%.
7. Bill Gates
Net worth: $137.2 billion
Source: Microsoft, investments
Age: 68
Residence: Medina, Washington
Citizenship: U.S.
As a teenager, Gates became passionate
about computer programming. He dropped out
of Harvard to cofound software firm Microsoft
with his high school friend Paul Allen in 1975,
creating one of the first software programs
available for the nascent personal computer
industry.
He was CEO of the company for 25
years and remained chairman until 2014. He
eventually stepped off the board in 2020
but told Forbes in 2023 that he still spends
about 10% of his time consulting with teams
at Microsoft.
These days he has investments
in dozens of companies, including waste
removal firm Republic Services and
agricultural equipment maker 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 through 2017 (except in 2008 and
from 2010 through 2013). Largely due to the
$59 billion he has donated to the Gates
Foundation, including a $20 billion gift in July
2022, he was overtaken as the world’s richest
person in 2018 by Jeff Bezos.
He and Melinda
French Gates divorced in 2021; she received
an estimated $10 billion in stock and other
assets as part of the divorce settlement.
Gates’ fortune rose by an estimated $6.3
billion during August, enough to move him
ahead up two spots to No. 7 richest.
8. Larry Page
Net worth: $136.1 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
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.
Page was a founding investor in asteroid
mining company Planetary Resources, which
was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in
2018.
He moved into the top 10 richest in the world
following a notable 15% jump in the share
price of Alphabet in May 2023.
Page’s fortune fell by $6.1 billion in August
due to a 5% decline in Alphabet shares.
9. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $130.4 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
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.
Brin’s fortune fell by $5.7 billion
in August 2024. He moved down one spot in
the ranks, to No. 9 from No. 8 last month.
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.
10. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $122.5 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 $4.65
billion.
Ballmer’s fortune dropped by an estimated
$1.5 billion in the past month amid a slight
dip in Microsoft shares. Ballmer and his wife
Connie are among the 25 most generous
philanthropists in America .
Who is the richest man in the world?
As of September 1, 2024, the richest person
in the world is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon
Musk. He’s worth $243.7 billion. He moved
into the number one spot in late May 2024,
overtaking Bernard Arnault of France.
Who is the richest woman in the world?
The richest woman in the world is Francoise
Bettencourt Meyers of France. As of
September 1, 2024, she is worth an estimated
$89.8 billion and is the world’s 18th richest
person.
Her fortune lies in her ownership
stake in cosmetics giant L’Oreal, which she
inherited from her late mother. Her
grandfather was the founder of L’Oreal.
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