The world’s Richest People in 2024 — the number of billionaires in the world 2.780+ individuals —
represent almost $14+ trln in wealth. The global billionaire population continued to grow in 2024,
increasing by 4%. Al Maktoum Magazine has collected the Forbes Billionaires Index data and presents a
ranking of the world’s richest 10 people as August 2024.
The individuals on this list belong to an even more exclusive club and wield still more power. Many are
founders of technology giants, with much of their wealth still invested in the companies they started.
Billionaires play an outsized role in shaping the global economy, politics, and philanthropy.
Details about the calculations are provided in the net worth analysis with each billionaire’s profile.
There’s been a huge fluctuation in the net worth of these billionaires in the past year. But, you can find
out more about that below.
Managing Editor
1. Elon Musk net worth — $250B
Age: 52
Residence: Austin, Texas
Source of Wealth: Tesla, SpaceX
Tesla and SpaceX Ownership Stake: 25% of Tesla, 44% of SpaceX
Other Assets: 9.2% of Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company
Elon Musk FRS is a South-African-born, Canadian/American engineer, industrial designer, and tech
entrepreneur. If you’re excited about the future of the world, you’ll probably have seen Musk
everywhere.
Musk founded PayPal and is also the founder of Tesla Inc, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
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.
Since the company’s inception in 2003, Tesla’s mission has been to accelerate the world’s transition to
sustainable energy. The first Tesla product, the Roadster sports car, debuted in 2008, followed by the
Model S sedan, which was introduced in 2012, and the Model X SUV, which launched in 2015.
As lead designer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to
Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. In 2008, the SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately
developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, and SpaceX made further history in 2017 by re-flying both a
Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time. Soon after, Falcon.
Building on these achievements, SpaceX is developing Starship – a fully reusable transportation system
that will carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond – and Starlink, which will deliver high
speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely
unavailable.
SpaceX aims to make humans a multi-planet species by developing reusable rockets to establish a self-
sustaining city on Mars.
Elon Musk, as CEO of Neuralink, is advancing high-bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to link the
human brain with computers.
He also founded The Boring Company, which integrates efficient tunneling technology with an all-
electric public transit system to reduce urban congestion and facilitate high-speed travel. The company
constructed a 1.15-mile research tunnel in Hawthorne and is currently building the Vegas Loop at the
Las Vegas Convention Center.
Earlier, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, a leading internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first
internet map and directions services.
- Jeff Bezos net worth — $211B
Age: 60
Residence: Seattle, Washington
Source of Wealth: Amazon
Amazon Ownership Stake: 10%
Other Assets: The Washington Post, Blue Origin, Bezos Expeditions, Altos Labs
Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle. He stepped down as
CEO to become executive chairman in July 2021. He now owns a bit less than 10% of the company.
Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, a spaceflight company, in 2000. Shortly after, Blue Origin acquired a
launch site in Texas and planned to launch the crewed suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard, in 2018 and
the orbital launch vehicle, New Glenn, in 2020.
In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post and its affiliated publications for $250 mn. By 2018, his
net worth reached $112 bn, making him the wealthiest person globally.
Bezos has donated more than $400 mn worth of stock to nonprofits in 2022, though it’s unclear which
organizations received those shares.
Bezos owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets; he briefly
flew to space in one in July 2021.
Amazon began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a variety of other e-commerce
products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
It is the world’s largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the largest
provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch.
3. Bernard Arnault net worth — $197B
Age: 75
Residence: Paris, France
Source of Wealth: LVMH
LVMH Ownership Stake: 47%
Other Assets: Art collection with works of Picasso, Yves Klein, Henry Moore, yacht Symphony
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French business magnate, investor, and art collector. He is the co-
founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world’s
largest luxury goods company. Ultimately, the company was formed by merging the two businesses.
Louis Vuitton is a very successful luxury fashion brand, and Moet Hennessey is the merged champagne
and cognac manufacturers.
He began his professional career that year as an engineer with the Ferret-Savinel construction
company and successively was promoted to various executive management positions before
becoming Chairman in 1978.
Bernard Arnault remained there until 1984, when he undertook the reorganization of the Financière
Agache holding company.
He restored the group’s profitability by pursuing a strategy to create the world’s leading luxury products
company. During this time, he revitalized Christian Dior as the foundation of the new organization.
In 1989, Mr. Arnault became the majority shareholder of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton,
establishing it as the world’s leading luxury products group. Since then, he has served as Chairman and
CEO of the company.
Mr. Arnault also holds the position of President of the Board of Directors of Groupe Arnault S.E., his
family holding company.
4. Mark Zuckerberg net worth — $179B
Age: 40
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Source of Wealth: Facebook / Meta
Facebook Ownership Stake: 12%
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He
is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms
(formerly Facebook, Inc.), of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling
shareholder.
Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook in February 2004 with his
roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond
colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with
majority shares. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. He has used
his funds to organize multiple philanthropic endeavors, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Zuckerberg’s prominence in the technology industry has prompted political and legal attention. The
founding of Facebook involved Zuckerberg in multiple lawsuits regarding the creation and ownership of
the website. In 2013, he co-founded the pro-immigration lobbying group FWD.
On April 10 and 11, 2018, Zuckerberg testified before the United States Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the usage of personal data by Facebook in relation to
the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach.
- Larry Ellison net worth — $179B
Age: 80
Residence: Lanai, Hawaii
Source of Wealth: Oracle
Oracle Ownership Stake: 35%
Other Assets: 3 million shares of Tesla, $1 billion worth of real estate
Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive
chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American
computer technology company Oracle Corporation.
As of 13th January 2023, he was listed by Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the seventh-wealthiest person
in the world, with an estimated fortune of $98.2 billion. Ellison is also known for his 98% ownership
stake in Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago.
To settle an insider trading lawsuit arising from his selling nearly $1 billion of Oracle stock, a court
allowed Ellison to donate $100 million to his own charitable foundation without admitting
wrongdoing.
In 1992 Larry Ellison shattered his elbow in a high-speed bicycle crash. After receiving treatment at
University of California, Davis, Ellison donated $5 million to seed the Lawrence J. Ellison Musculo-
Skeletal Research Center. In 1998, the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center opened on the
Sacramento campus of the UC Davis Medical Center.
6. Larry Page net worth — $153B
Age: 51
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Source of Wealth: Alphabet, Google
Alphabet Ownership Stake: with a co-founder Sergey Brin, Page owns 51% of voting shares and
less than 12% of total shares
Lawrence Edward Page is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur.
He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Page was the CEO (chief executive officer) of Google from 1997 until August 2001 (stepping down in
favor of Eric Schmidt) then from April 2011 until July 2015 when he moved to become CEO of Alphabet
Inc. (created to deliver “major advancements” as Google’s parent company), a post he held until
December 4, 2019. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder.
Larry Page was Google’s founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and
profitability before moving into his role as President, Products in April 2001. He continues to share
responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin.
Creating Google helped Larry Page build a significant amount of wealth. He has also invested in flying car
startups Kitty Hawk and Opener. Page is the co-creator and namesake of PageRank, a search ranking
algorithm for Google. He received the Marconi Prize in 2004 with co-writer Brin.
The son of Michigan State University computer data science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry’s love
of computers began at age six. While following in his father’s footsteps in academics, he became an
honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in
engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering. During his time in Ann Arbor, Larry built an
inkjet printer out of Lego™ bricks.
While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry met Sergey Brin and
together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Larry went on leave from
Stanford after earning his master’s degree.
In 2002, Larry was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a member of the
National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and together
with Co-Founder Sergey Brin, Larry was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004.
7. Sergey Brin net worth — $146B
Age: 50
Residence: Los Altos, California
Source of Wealth: Alphabet, Google
Alphabet Ownership Stake: with a co-founder Larry Page, Brin owns 51% of voting shares and
less than 12% of total shares
Other Assets: shares in Tesla and 23andMe
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.
Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He
earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father’s and
grandfather’s footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science.
After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met
Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they
suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park.
Sergey Brin is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as an honorary
MBA from Instituto de Empresa. It was at Stanford where he met Larry Page and worked on the project
that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc. in 1998, and Sergey continues to share
responsibility for day-to-day operations with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.
Sergey’s research interests include search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources,
and data mining of large text collections and scientific data.
He has published more than a dozen academic papers, including Extracting Patterns and Relations from
the World Wide Web; Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture for Data with High Dimensionality,
which he published with Larry Page; Scalable Techniques for Mining Casual Structures; Dynamic Itemset
Counting and Implication Rules for Market Basket Data; and Beyond Market Baskets: Generalizing
Association Rules to Correlations.
Sergey has been a featured speaker at several international academics, business and technology
forums, including the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design
Conference.
He has shared his views on the technology industry and the future of search on the Charlie Rose Show,
CNBC, and CNNfn. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named “Persons of the Week” by ABC World.
8. Bill Gates net worth — $135B
Age: 68
Residence: Medina, Washington
Source of Wealth: Microsoft
Microsoft Ownership Stake: 1%
Other Assets: investments in Canadian National Railway, AutoNation, approximately 242,000
acres of farmland in the U.S.
William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of
Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the
positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also
being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.
He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Gates
founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen and has since become the largest PC software company
worldwide.
Gates has pursued many business and philanthropic endeavors. He is the founder and chairman of
several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, bgC3, and TerraPower.
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.
In June 2008, Gates transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda established in 2000.
In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his
philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education of the X PRIZE,
and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.
9. Steve Ballmer net worth — $133B
Age: 68
Residence: Hunts Point, Washington
Source of Wealth: Microsoft
Microsoft Ownership Stake: 4% (333 million shares)
Other Assets: Los Angeles Clippers, Redmond
Steven Anthony 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).
Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980, and subsequently left the MBA program at
Stanford University.
He eventually became president in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO on January 13, 2000. On February
4, 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella; Ballmer remained on Microsoft’s
Board of Directors until August 19, 2014, when he left to prepare for teaching a new class.
His tenure and legacy as Microsoft CEO has received mixed reception, with the company tripling sales
and doubling profits, but losing its market dominance and missing out on 21st-century technology
trends such as the ascendance of smartphones in the form of iPhone and Android.
Ballmer is credited for continuing to grow Microsoft’s enterprise strategy, steadily growing the
company’s bottom line, overseeing the launch of the original Xbox and investing in the cloud. Ballmer
retired from Microsoft in 2013.
Gates transitioned to a new role as technology advisor and Microsoft board member, serving as
chairman until 2014. 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.
10. Warren Buffett net worth — $133B
Age: 93
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Source of Wealth: Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway Ownership Stake: 30.71%
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently
the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world
and has a net worth of over $110 billion as of January 2023, making him the world’s fourth-wealthiest
person.
Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. He has
been referred to as the “Oracle” or “Sage” of Omaha by global media.
He is noted for his adherence to value investing, and his personal frugality despite his immense wealth.
He went on to graduate from Columbia Business School, where he molded his investment philosophy
around the concept of value investing pioneered by Benjamin Graham. He attended New York Institute
of Finance to focus on his economics background and soon after began various investment
business partnerships, including one with Graham.
He created Buffett Partnership in 1956 and his investment firm eventually acquired a textile
manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway, assuming its name to create a diversified holding
company, and later as the company’s chairman and majority shareholder in 1970. In 1978, Charlie
Munger joined Buffett as vice-chairman.
