Latest news with #'sBillionaires
Leaders
04-04-2025
- Business
- Leaders
Saudi Billionaires Reclaim Global Spotlight with Historic Forbes Comeback
Saudi Arabia's business elite have made a striking return to the global stage. Fifteen billionaires featured on Forbes' 2025 World's Billionaires list, showcasing a combined wealth of $55.8 billion. This resurgence follows an eight-year absence, reflecting the Kingdom's economic transformation and a boom in initial public offerings (IPOs) after the COVID-19 pandemic. The list highlights both new entrants and familiar names, offering a glimpse into the diverse industries driving Saudi Arabia's growth under Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia boasts the largest number of Arab billionaires, while the UAE and Egypt follow with five billionaires each, representing $24.3 billion and $20.6 billion, respectively. This resurgence highlights a significant shift in wealth accumulation within the region. Prince Alwaleed Tops Arab List Out of the 15 Saudi billionaires this year, 14 are newcomers, with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is the wealthiest Saudi and Arab, with a fortune of $16.5 billion. About 40% of his wealth comes from his ownership stake in Kingdom Holding. This company has investments in the Four Seasons hotel chain and the George V hotel in Paris, in addition to a stake in X (formerly Twitter). The newly minted billionaires encompass a diverse spectrum of industries. They range from healthcare to retail to media. Sulaiman Al Habib stands out as the second wealthiest Saudi, boasting $10.9 billion. As the founder of Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Medical Services Group, he has significantly impacted the healthcare sector since going public in 2020. The Al Muhaidib family also remains prominent on this list. Emad Al Muhaidib ranks third with $3.8 billion, followed closely by siblings Essam and Sulaiman Al Muhaidib, each with fortunes of $3.6 billion. They inherited and expanded their late father's conglomerate into multiple sectors, including infrastructure and finance. Key Figures Shaping the Market An investor to watch, Mohammad Abunayyan, commands a wealth of $3.2 billion as a key player in energy and utilities. In banking and retail, Abdullah Al Rajhi and Abdullah Al Othaim share seventh place with $2.5 billion each. Additionally, Abdullah Amer Al Nahdi, founder of Al Nahdi Medical Group, ranks eighth with a fortune of $2.3 billion. Other notable billionaires include Waleed Al-Ibrahim, founder of MBC Group (net worth: $1.4 billion), and Khaled Abdul Rahman Al-Rajhi, chairman of Abdulrahman Saleh Al-Rajhi & Partners (net worth: $1.2 billion). Yousuf Mohammad Jamjoom, from Jamjoom Pharmaceutical Industries, also boasts a similar fortune. Musk Tops Global List Elon Musk retained his position as the world's richest person with a net worth of $342 billion, fueled by his ventures in electric vehicles, space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Close behind is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at $216 billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at $215 billion, as technology giants continue to dominate the upper echelons of wealth. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison ranks fourth with $192 billion, while Bernard Arnault, the French luxury magnate behind LVMH, rounds out the top five with $178 billion. These five individuals represent a combined net worth of over $1.1 trillion, underscoring the influence of tech innovation and global consumer markets in shaping modern fortunes. This year's rankings underscore the Kingdom's growing economic influence, with its billionaire count outpacing other Arab nations. The rise in regional wealth highlights the expanding opportunities in Gulf markets, particularly in real estate, healthcare, and finance. Short link : Post Views: 84
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Biggest Billionaire Gainers 2025
The past 12 months have been very good to the planet's billionaires. There are more of them (3,028) than ever before and they're richer than they've ever been (worth a combined $16.1 trillion). Overall, the billionaire class is nearly $2 trillion richer than last year. But the big gains have not been shared evenly: $453 billion of the increase comes just from ten super fortunate people. These ten biggest gainers on Forbes' 2025 World's Billionaires list each added tens of billions—or, in one case, more than $100 billion—to their already-massive fortunes since the 2024 ranking. They made their money in retail, finance and, mainly, tech. No one in the world gained more than Elon Musk, who took back the title of richest person in the world after a stellar year for his startups SpaceX and xAI, plus a 12-month rise in the share price of Tesla, despite a recent selloff. Musk is an astonishing $147 billion richer this year. He's the only billionaire to add nine figures to his net worth since the 2024 list. Eight of the ten are American citizens, either through birth or, in the case of Musk, naturalization. The other two are Lei Jun, a Chinese citizen whose fortune grew by 300%, to an estimated $43.5 billion, thanks to higher demand for his company's electric cars, and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian citizen worth an estimated $62.9 billion amid a jump in crypto markets. Tim Pannell for Forbes The only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton (d. 1992), she became the world's richest woman in September, her first time since 2022. She hit the $100 billion mark in November as Walmart shares climbed to record highs. The stock is up more than 53% since last year. Best known for spearheading the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her family's hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, Walton has given away an estimated $1.7 billion, including her most recent gift, disclosed in an August filing, of $249 million to help fund the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, also in Bentonville. Changpeng Zhao, who goes by CZ, is the founder and former CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. In November 2023, Zhao stepped down as Binance's CEO as part of a sweeping settlement with U.S. authorities. He pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and was sentenced to four months in prison. He also paid a $50 million fine. He's richer this year amid bull crypto markets and a Forbes investigation into his vast holdings of Binance's exchange-issued token, BNB. Despite demands from the Justice Department to break up Google, the Alphabet cofounder and board member is $30 billion richer thanks to a 30% rise in the Google parent company's shares. Page, who stepped down as Alphabet CEO in 2019, is reportedly working on a new company that plans to apply AI to manufacturing. The youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton (d. 1992), he retired from Walmart's board in 2016 and yielded the seat to his son Steuart. He remains the chairman of the family's Arvest Bank Group, which boasts assets of $26 billion. The cofounder of Susquehanna International Group, one of Wall Street's largest and most successful trading firms, has invested in hundreds of private companies globally, including TikTok parent ByteDance, its most valuable holding based on Forbes reporting. He's benefitted as ByteDance's valuation has hit $312 billion in private markets amid a bidding war over TikTok. In September, he became the first member of America's richest family to join the $100 billion club, on the back of rising Walmart shares. The eldest son of Sam Walton (d. 1992), he retired from the board in June 2024, after more than four decades as a director. Visual China Group via Getty Images From budget-friendly smartphones to electric vehicles, Xiaomi has come a long way since Lei Jun cofounded the Hong Kong-listed company in 2010. With the firm's electric vehicle venture seeing higher demand for its cars, shares have climbed more than 300%. Last year, Lei was worth an estimated $10.9 billion. He is also the chairman of Hong Kong-listed software firm Kingsoft and an investor in JOYY Inc., a Nasdaq-listed live-streaming and social media platform formerly known as Not long ago, Mark Zuckerberg banned President Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram following the January 6 riots. One presidential election later, the Meta founder has friended Trump, including putting pro-Trump entrepreneur Dana White on Meta's board in early January and cohosting an inauguration reception for the president alongside several Republican billionaires. Shares of his social media giant have surged nearly 25% since last year's list, making Zuck the second richest person in the world for the first time. Ellison, too, has been sticking close to Trump. He may not have been front and center among tech tycoons during the president's inauguration, but he stood a few feet away from Trump when the president soon announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative backed, in part, by Ellison's software firm Oracle. Ellison's net worth went up by $51 billion this year thanks to a growing AI business that helped push Oracle's stock price up by 40%. AFP via Getty Images Thanks to an incredible $147 billion year, Elon Musk, yet again, is the richest person alive. All of his largest assets have gone up in value: Tesla stock is up 50% since last year's list, rocket maker SpaceX is worth $350 billion, nearly double its valuation from last year, and Musk's artificial intelligence business, xAI, raised $6 billion from private investors at a $50 billion valuation in November—then, last week, Musk announced that xAI was acquiring X (formerly Twitter) in an all-stock deal that valued X at more than what Musk paid in 2022, and boosted xAI's valuation to an apparent $80 billion–a $30 billion bump from just three months ago.
Forbes
02-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Cities With The Most Billionaires 2025
The world's 3,028 billionaires are spread across more than 800 cities around the globe, from Feldmeilen, Switzerland to Ezulwini, a small town in the western part of Eswatini–better known by its former name, Swaziland, in southern Africa. Yet nearly a quarter of them, worth a combined $3.3 trillion, have chosen to make their primary residence in one of just ten cities in six countries, according to Forbes' latest World's Billionaires list. The Big Apple is home to the most billionaires yet again, with 123 of them–worth a combined $759 billion. New York City has ranked as the top city for billionaires for all but one of the past 12 years. (Beijing was No. 1 in 2021.) Of the billionaire New Yorkers, 68 are finance and investment magnates, 13 are real estate moguls and 12 are in fashion and retail. Moscow comes in second place, with 90 billionaires–16 more than a year ago. The growth in billionaire residents pushed Moscow ahead of Hong Kong, which tied for the No. 2 city last year. Moscow's billionaires are worth $409 billion. Hong Kong, one of three Chinese cities in the top ten, is No. 3, with 72 billionaires. After dropping one spot each year since 2022, the number of London billionaires is growing again. The city saw a net gain of nine billionaires over the past year, buoying the British capital's rank to No. 4. Mumbai, meanwhile, dropped from No. 4 last year to No. 6, with 67 billionaires worth $349 billion–down two people from last year. Forbes was unable to identify primary residences for 40 of the 3,028 billionaires on this year's list. Los Angeles rounds out the list two positions lower than last year with 56 billionaires worth a combined $243 billion. Angelenos with three-comma fortunes include Rihanna ($1.4 billion), LeBron James ($1.3 billion) and newcomer Arnold Schwarzernegger ($1.1 billion). As Forbes did last year, Los Angeles residents include those living in cities throughout L.A. County, including Santa Monica and Hidden Hills (home to Kim Kardashian, $1.7 billion). San Francisco's 58 billionaires are worth $217 billion, or $3.7 billion on average. The California city has gained eight billionaires since last year, helping elevate it to tie for No. 8. Seven of San Francisco's nine newcomers are cofounders of generative AI company Anthropic, including brother and sister Dario and Daniela Amodei (each worth an estimated $1.2 billion). The major OpenAI competitor is valued at $61.5 billion. The other two newcomers are Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang ($2 billion) and AppLovin Chief Technology Officer Vasily Shikin ($1.7 billion). Shanghai dropped a spot since last year to tie at No. 8 on the list with 58 billionaires–still a net gain from last year's 54. Colin Huang, cofounder of PDD Holdings (parent company of Temu), remains the city's richest resident with a $42.3 billion fortune. Five newcomers in Shanghai this year are worth a combined $7.7 billion. The list includes Shanghai Allist Pharmaceuticals cofounder and chairman Du Jinhao ($1.9 billion) and Zhu Weisong ($1.7 billion), CEO of toy maker Bloks Group. The city-state moved up two spots from No. 9 last year. It is home to 60 billionaires worth a collective $259 billion–a more than $100 billion jump from last year. One person accounts for more than a quarter of the total wealth in the locale: Zhang Yiming ($65.5 billion), a Chinese citizen, is the main cofounder and former chairman of ByteDance, best known for its app TikTok. His fortune has grown by more than $20 billion over the past year, making him China's richest person. Mumbai dropped two spots to No. 6 since last year, partly due to the net loss of two billionaires and partly because it got overtaken by London and Beijing. Mukesh Ambani ($92.5 billion), the chairman of Reliance Industries, remains Asia's richest person, despite a more than $20 billion decline in his fortune in the past year. Mumbai has six newcomers, including four members of the Doshi family: brothers Viren ($1.4 billion), Kirit ($1 billion), Pankaj ($1.2 billion) and Hitesh ($1.2 billion) Doshi, whose manufacturing company Waaree Industries went public in October. Beijing keeps its No. 5 ranking, unchanged from a year ago. China's capital has five more billionaires than last year, but remains far from its 2021 high of 100 Beijing residents with three-comma fortunes. The 68 Beijing billionaires include Lei Jun ($43.5 billion), who is cofounder and CEO of smartphone maker Xiaomi. The newcomers this year include two from listed jewelry firm Laopu Gold, founder Xu Gaoming ($8.2 billion) and investor Chen Guodong ($1.2 billion); plus Yu Kai ($2 billion), the CEO of autonomous car part-maker Horizon Robotics. London moves up two spots from No. 6 last year. The UK capital is home to 71 billionaires, including seven newcomers. One is Royal Caribbean heir Peter Preben Wilhelmsen ($2.7 billion), who still owns a stake in the world's second largest cruise ship company, cofounded by his father. Len Blavatnik is once again London's richest resident. Nearly half of his $29.9 billion comes from Warner Music, which he purchased in 2011 for $3.3 billion and took public nine years later at four times the value. After tying with Moscow for second place in 2024, Hong Kong fell to No. 3 on this year's list, with 72 billionaires. Their combined fortunes also dropped $17 billion since last year. Despite the net loss of two billionaires, Hong Kong is home to two newcomers: Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun ($8.5 billion) and Yang Qiumei ($1.6 billion), who inherited a stake in Chinese AI giant SenseTime after her husband, Tang Xiao'ou, who cofounded the company, died in 2023. Moscow added the most billionaires this year, jumping from 74 to 90, including 11 newcomers. Together they are worth $409 billion, up $31 billion from a year ago. Oil magnate Vagit Alekperov is the wealthiest person living in Russia's capital; more than half of his estimated $28.7 billion fortune comes from his stake in oil company Lukoil. New York retains its crown as the most popular city for the ultrawealthy for the fourth consecutive year, with 123 billionaires, 13 more than last year. Fifteen are newcomers to the list, including Blackstone CFO Michael Chae (estimated net worth $1.1 billion), comedian Jerry Seinfeld ($1.1 billion), Chipotle founder Steve Ells ($1 billion) and Wonder founder Marc Lore ($2.8 billion). Former mayor and financial data tycoon Michael Bloomberg ($105 billion) remains the city's richest resident, followed by Koch Industries heir Julia Koch ($74.2 billion).
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The $100 Billion Club: These 15 People Have 12-Figure Fortunes
T he ultra-elite echelon of people with dozen-digit fortunes didn't even exist eight years ago. Now, a record 15 people make the grade on Forbes' 2025 World's Billionaires list, up from 14 last year and six in 2023. For the first time, three of them have a net worth above $200 billion. In all, these 15 'centibillionaires' are worth $2.4 trillion, nearly $400 billion more than a year ago—and more than the planet's 1,500 'poorest' billionaires combined. Put another way, this group of just 0.5% of the world's 3,028 billionaires holds an incredible 15% of all billionaire wealth. In 1987, when Forbes published its first ever global rich list, the idea of a centibillionaire was hard to imagine. We found just two people, both Japanese tycoons, worth more than $10 billion (about $28 billion adjusted for inflation, good enough to rank just 71st on the 2025 list). It took the dot-com bubble to create the first centibillionaire, Bill Gates, whose Microsoft shares briefly lifted his fortune above $100 billion in 1999, before the ensuing crash chopped his net worth nearly in half. No one else came close for nearly two decades, even as markets soared before and after the Great Recession. Jeff Bezos finally cracked the code in late 2017, becoming the second ever centibillionaire, when Amazon's market capitalization rocketed toward $1 trillion. Still, it wasn't until 2021 that the $100 Billion Club expanded beyond Bezos, when Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and Bill Gates joined its ranks. Now, with extreme affluence surging around the world, membership is getting (just a little bit) more common by the day. The three living children of Walmart founder Sam Walton (d. 1992) all joined the $100 Billion Club this year, replacing two members on last year's list whose fortunes dropped back into 11 figures: Indian industrial tycoon Mukesh Ambani (estimated net worth: $92.5 billion) and Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu ($82.5 billion). Meanwhile, a number of other billionaires are knocking on the door, led by Nvidia's Jensen Huang ($98.7 billion), tech tycoon Michael Dell ($97.7 billion) and L'Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers ($81.6 billion), who briefly became the first-ever female centibillionaire in June 2024. In September, Walton became the world's wealthiest woman once again, overtaking French L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who had surpassed her for the previous two and a half years. The Walmart heiress is best known for spearheading the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her family's hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. She has given away an estimated $1.7 billion, including a recent gift of $249 million to help fund the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, also in Bentonville. The cofounder of financial data and media company Bloomberg LP donated $1 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, last July to make its medical school tuition free for most students. Altogether he has given $4.6 billion to the school, which announced in March that it will lay off more than 2,000 employees after the Trump administration canceled $800 million of federal grants. The Microsoft cofounder hasn't ranked this low since 1991, when he was worth $4.4 billion. Microsoft stock is down 2% since last year, but the main reason for Gates' $20 billion drop is Forbes' increased estimate of his 2021 divorce settlement, which we peg at $25 billion. In his capacity as chairman of the $70 billion (net assets) Gates Foundation, he met with Trump in February to advocate for the U.S. Agency for International Development after the administration started slashing its workforce and programs. The self-described nerd also barnstormed the country that month, appearing on the Today show, The Tonight Show (and everything in between) to promote his recently published childhood memoir, Source Code. Three decades after Walmart founder Sam Walton's death, his children are stepping back. In June, Rob, 80, retired from the retailing giant's board after more than 40 years as a director. Jim, 76, left the board in 2016, but still chairs the family's Arvest Bank Group. In December, the Waltons announced that all eight of Sam's grandkids now share in the voting rights for the family's 45% stake in Walmart. Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft 11 years ago but still raves about the stock, which accounts for an estimated 80% of his portfolio. It's been a heck of an investment: MSFT shares have returned nearly 1,200% since he left the top job, quadrupling the S&P 500. Ballmer is also very emotionally invested in the L.A. Clippers, the basketball team he bought for $2 billion in 2014. Now moved into the shiny new Intuit Dome stadium that Ballmer spent some $2 billion building, it's the NBA's fifth most valuable team, worth $5.5 billion. Spain's richest person has invested more than $1 billion in logistics and office properties across Europe over the past year. He can afford it: His stake in fashion retail giant Inditex, which he founded in 1985 and is best known for its Zara brand, is worth a record $100 billion, as shares swelled 27% over the past 12 months. Plus Ortega, who stepped down as chairman 14 years ago, has another $3.4 billion (pretax) coming his way, too, thanks to a fat dividend announced in March. The Alphabet cofounders and board members are richer this year due to a nearly 30% jump in Alphabet shares—despite the Justice Department's demand that Google be broken up. Brin has reportedly been back in the office working on Alphabet's Gemini family of AI models, and reportedly encouraged employees to do the same, penning a February memo urging in-office attendance. Page, meanwhile, is reportedly working on a new company to apply AI to manufacturing. The 94-year-old investor has amassed $334 billion of cash on Berkshire Hathaway's books—and is in no hurry to spend it. Buffett was a net seller of $134 billion of equities in 2024 and hasn't made a splashy acquisition since 2022's $11.5 billion purchase of insurer Alleghany Corp. 'Often, nothing looks compelling,' Buffett wrote in his annual shareholder letter in February. The richest person on the planet a year ago, Arnault has seen his fortune drop by $55 billion amid what the luxury goods giant has called 'a challenging economic and geopolitical environment.' The 76-year-old father of five (all LVMH executives) seems to be having fun keeping everyone guessing as to his successor: Son Antoine was center stage for the group's sponsorship of last summer's Paris Olympics; son Frédéric was recently named chief of its Loro Piana fashion brand; and daughter Delphine and son Alexandre were seated with their father at Trump's inauguration. Ellison wasn't one of the tech tycoons front and center at Trump's inauguration, but the next day he stood feet away from the president at the White House as Trump announced a $500 billion initiative to build AI infrastructure, including data centers, backed in part by Ellison's firm Oracle. Ellison's fortune is up $51 billion from 2024 due to a 40% rise in Oracle's stock price. The Amazon founder and chairman is $21 billion richer than last year and keeping busy as an investor. Bezos, who offloaded $5 billion of Amazon shares over the past 12 months, has continued to pump cash into startups, including several AI robotics firms. His space outfit, Blue Origin, announced in February that it's laying off 10% of its workforce, a month after the successful launch of its New Glenn rocket. Meanwhile his recent moves at another toy, the Washington Post, including declaring that the opinion pages must support 'personal liberties and free markets,' have ruffled establishment feathers. The formerly progressive Meta CEO surprised many with his public embrace of MAGA, including putting pro-Trump entrepreneur Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, on Meta's board in early January and cohosting an inauguration reception for the president alongside several Republican billionaires. Shares of the social media behemoth have surged nearly 25% over the past year amid optimism about Meta's AI investments—enough to make Zuck the planet's second-richest person for the first time. Musk reclaimed the title of world's richest person from LVMH's Bernard Arnault last May, when private investors valued Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, at $24 billion. Then, in December, he became the first person ever worth $400 billion, after xAI's valuation doubled to $50 billion and Musk's rocket maker, SpaceX, hit $350 billion (up from $210 billion in June). Shares of his EV company, Tesla, also reached an all-time high that month, but the stock has crashed by nearly 40% since inauguration day, when Musk took over as head of President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Still, he's worth $147 billion more than a year ago. And that's before Musk announced last Friday that xAI had acquired his social media company X (formerly Twitter) in a deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, or roughly what Musk paid for the platform in 2022.
