The top 10 richest people in the world (December 2024)
Musk is the biggest gainer of world’s richest in November, with Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos clocking impressive increases as well.
?resize=300,200 300w, ?resize=768,512 768w, ?resize=1024,683 1024w, ?resize=1536,1024 1536w, ?resize=2048,1365 2048w, ?resize=720,480 720w" alt="" width="5497" height="3665" />Key Facts
- Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, a title he reclaimed in late May 2024. His fortune fell by nearly $7 billion over the past month.
- Larry Ellison became the world’s No. 2 richest as of October 1 following a runup in the price of Oracle shares in September. He’s still No. 2 as of December 1.
- Bill Gates dropped out of the top 10 richest on October 1 after Forbes obtained new information about a significant contraction in his fortune.
- 8/10 of the richest people in the world are Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Steve Ballmer.
- All of the top ten richest people as of December 1 are men. Each of them is worth $120 billion or more.
Fuelled by a hefty in rise in Tesla shares and a higher value for his AI startup, Elon Musk’s fortune grew by a whopping 25% during November, with his fortune surpassing $300 billion for the first time in two years. Tesla’s stock surged after Donald Trump clinched the U.S. presidential victory on November 6, with shareholders betting on Musk’s close ties to Trump.
Musk has been the world’s richest person since late May, and he’s just widened the gap between him and the No. 2 richest to more than $100 billion. His fortune briefly hit its highest ever level–$334 billion– on November 22, per Forbes’ estimates. As of midnight Eastern time on December 1, Musk is worth $330 billion–a whopping $66 billion more than on November 1.
November was a banner month for several others among the world’s top 10 richest as well. Larry Ellison, ranked at No. 2, was the second biggest gainer. He got $22 billion wealthier during the month on the back of stronger shares of Oracle, the software company he cofounded and chairs, and is now worth an estimated nearly $227 billion. Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos, ranked at No. 3 richest, got $19 billion richer thanks to an 11% jump in the e-commerce giant’s shares over the past month. At $223 billion, he’s worth just a few billion less than Ellison.
Altogether, the world’s top 10 richest are worth an estimated $1.81 trillion as of December 1, up by $106 billion from a month ago. U.S. stock indices rallied following Trump’s election victory, with the S&P 500 index up nearly 3.6% for the month and the Nasdaq up 3.5%.
The biggest loser of this elite group was French luxury goods titan Bernard Arnault, whose fortune fell by $9 billion during the month to an estimated $160.3 billion. Despite the drop, he held onto his spot as No. 5 richest. Shares of LVMH fell by about 6% during November and by 20% during the past six months amid weaker sales in China.
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 December 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?*
*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. Warren Buffett
7. Larry Page
8. Sergey Brin
9. Steve Ballmer
10. Amancio Ortega
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $330.1 billion
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X
Age: 53
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: U.S.
?resize=300,214 300w, ?resize=768,548 768w, ?resize=1024,731 1024w, ?resize=1536,1097 1536w, ?resize=2048,1463 2048w" alt="" width="3918" height="2798" />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%.
Musk, who donated more than $100 million to support Donald Trump in the November 5 presidential election, was named by Trump as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory group that will recommend cuts to government jobs, programs and spending. There are potentially significant conflicts of interest at play, given Musk’s companies’ ties to the federal government, including SpaceX (a customer of the Department of Defense) and Tesla (regulated by the Department of Transportation and the EPA).
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. xAI raised an additional $5 billion from investors in November, valuing the startup at $50 billion. He owns an estimated 54% of the company.
2. Larry Ellison
Net worth: $226.9 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 rose in the past month, adding $22.1 billion to Ellison’s fortune. As of December 1 he is worth about $3.6 billion more than No. 3 Jeff Bezos.
3. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $223.3 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.
Amazon shares rose by about 11% in November, adding $19 billion to Bezos’ fortune.
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 and No. 3 on the 2024 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: $198.7 billion
Source: Meta (Facebook)
Age: 40
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
?resize=300,229 300w, ?resize=768,585 768w, ?resize=1024,780 1024w" alt="" width="1080" height="823" />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, with several billion users globally. 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 rose by $2.4 billion, the result of a slight gain in Meta shares during November.
5. Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $160.3 billion
Source: LVMH/ luxury goods
Age: 75
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
?resize=300,201 300w, ?resize=768,514 768w, ?resize=1024,685 1024w, ?resize=1536,1027 1536w, ?resize=2048,1370 2048w" alt="" width="2464" height="1648" />Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of luxury goods group LVMH, maintains his No. 5 rank despite a $9 billion contraction in his fortune this past month. In 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 and in November Alexandre was named deputy CEO of LVMH’s wine and spirits division. His daughter Delphine, who runs Dior, and son Antoine, already sit on the board. In June he named son Frédéric as head of LVMH’s 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.
6. Warren Buffett
Net worth: $150.6 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 94
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: U.S.
Buffett’s fortune rose by $8.6 billion during November, even after accounting for a gift of $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to his children’s charitable foundations. Berkshire Hathaway’s A share stock price climbed nearly 7% during November, helping Buffett move up one rank to No. 6 richest from No. 7 richest a month ago.
Known as the "Oracle of Omaha," 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 more than $60 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and foundations run by his children and one started by his late first wife. That includes $5.3 billion in June 2024, 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.
7. Larry Page
Net worth: $140.4 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Page moves down to No. 7 richest from No. 6 in November. His fortune declined by $1.7 billion as shares of Google-parent Alphabet drooped. In late November the Department of Justice said Google should sell its Chrome browser in order to reduce the company’s dominance online. In response, Google said in a statement that such a move would hurt consumers and America’s technological leadership.
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.
8. Sergey Brin
Net worth: $134.3 billion
Source: Google
Age: 51
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: U.S.
Brin held onto his No. 8 rank from a month ago despite a small decline in Alphabet shares; his fortune fell by $1.6 billion to an estimated $134.3 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.
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 some $1.25 billion to various groups, including a group of collaborative academics spearheaded by his team called Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s.
9. Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $124.8 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 rose by an estimated $3.9 billion in November primarily due to an uptick in Microsoft shares, which climbed about 4% during the month.
10. Amancio Ortega
Net worth: $123.8 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. 9 to No. 10 as shares of Inditex declined; his fortune shrank by an estimated $3.8 billion. He owns about 60% of Madrid-listed Inditex.
Who is the richest man in the world?
As of December 1, 2024, the richest person in the world is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He’s worth $330.1 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 Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. As of December 1, 2024, she is worth an estimated $101.9 billion and is the world’s 17th richest person. Her fortune lies in her ownership stake in retailer Walmart, which she inherited from her late father. Her brothers Rob, Jim and John (d. 2005) also inherited stakes in Walmart from their father. John’s widow Christy Walton and their son Lukas Walton inherited John’s shares and both rank on Forbes’ billionaires list.
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