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.
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.
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.
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.
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
