Top 10 Richest People In The World
Who is the richest person in the world?
With thousands of billionaires worldwide playing their part to shape global economics, philanthropy, and politics, there remains a unique curiosity and public interest in the leading ten. These pack leaders have even added power above their thousands of counterparts. Their wealth came from various differing sources. Most are tech warriors, with the majority of their net worth still vested in the tech companies they created.
Their wealth continued to grow because once you have that many billions under your name, you can do many things with them, including borrowing against them and, in the process, avoiding having to sell stock and other things that may knock their wealth down. If you are a multi-billionaire, you can also use the many tax deductions available to you to your advantage. You can use them to control your reported income, and some of this list of ten have even had years where they did not pay any income tax at all. This is significant because it saves them millions in one go.
However, because most of the people on the list have companies holding most of their wealth on publicly traded stocks, their net worth tends to change from time to time as market valuations also change. For example, the CEO and founder of Tesla Inc, Elon Musk, who is also the richest person in the world as of March 5, 2022, saw his estimated net worth rise in 2021 because Tesla's share price had risen by over 32% in 2021. This meant a significant bump up his net worth since he owns 17% of the company.
On the other hand, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lost his spot in the top 10 in February 2022 because Meta Platforms Inc's share price sank by 26% after a below-par earnings report. As of March 5, 2022, Zuckerberg is now sitting at number 15 and has a net worth of $71.7 billion.
Below are the world's wealthiest people as of March 2022:
1. Elon Musk – $229.1 billion
South African-born Elon Musk attended university in Canada and Pennsylvania. He holds degrees in economics and physics. He enrolled at Stanford University but had to defer only two days after enrollment to launch his company Zip2. He later used proceeds from Zip2 to launch X.com. X.com was an online payment system that he later sold to eBay, ultimately developing into Paypal Holdings Inc.
In 2004, Elon Musk founded Tesla Motors (which is now just Tesla), where he still serves as CEO. Besides its flagship electric vehicles, the company also manufactures vehicle accessories, energy storage devices, and solar power systems (through SolarCity, which it acquired in 2016). Musk also serves as CEO and Chief Engineer for SpaceX, a company that develops space launch rockets.
By 2020, Tesla had shot up 740%, propelling Musk up wealth rankings. But it was only in January 2021 that he became the world's wealthiest person. He has held this title since then!
2. Jeff Bezos – $171.4 billion
After pitching to then-boss David E. Shaw and being rejected, Jeff Bezos decided to start Amazon from his garage in Seattle. This was in 1994. Not long afterward, he quit from the hedge fund D.E Shaw that he was working for to focus on growing Amazon.
Although it started exclusively as an online bookstore, Amazon has grown into a marketplace for almost anything you can think of and is now one of the world's leading retailers. In 2017, it acquired Wholefoods, solidifying its strategic and constant diversification pattern. The company also has its foothold in the pharmaceutical world.
Jeff Bezos has set a record as the second man after Bill Gates in 1999 to amass a net worth excessing $100 billion.
In 2019, he had a 16% stake in Amazon, but he has since gone down 4% after transferring the same percentage of shares to ex-wife Mackenzie Scott in their divorce agreement. During Covid, Bezos net worth has benefited from the increased senses for online shopping, and this saw the share price for Amazon jumping up 76% in 2020. He has since left his position as CEO for Amazon, opting to stay as only an executive chair since July 5, 2021.
His other projects include The Washington Post (purchased in 2013), Blue Origin, and the Long Now or the 10,000 Year Clock.
Related: Jeff Bezos Net Worth
3. Bernard Arnault And Family – $154.9 billion
Aged 72, Ben Arnault has been in the game for long. The French national is the chairperson for LVMH, the leading luxury goods company. Under LVMH falls brands like Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Hennessey, and Sephora.
Most of Arnault's net worth results from the stake he controls in Christian Dior SE, a holding company that controls 41.3% of LVMH. His stake in Christian Dior and the 6.2% he owns in LVMH are held in Groupe Familial Arnault, a holding company owned by his family.
4. Bill Gates – $131.2 billion
After teaming up with a friend and successfully building software for the original microcomputers, Gates decided to drop out of Harvard in his junior year to go and found Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen.
Microsoft is now the largest software company worldwide that now manufactures its line of computers, dabbles in the book publishing world through Microsoft Press, sells video game systems, provides email services through Exchange server, and other services offered by Microsoft.
After serving for many years as a chief software architect, in 2008, Gates transitioned to the position of board chair. He was also serving on the board for Berkshire Hathaway since 2004, but in March 2020, he ceased his roles from both boards.
Most of his wealth is in a company called Cascade Investments LLC. The company owns stocks from the likes of the Canadian National Railway, Deere, Republic Services, and other private investments in energy and real estate.
5. Warren Buffett – $117.4 billion
Warren Buffett is easily the most famous value investor globally. In 1962, he bought shares in Berkshire Hathaway, a textile company. By 1965, he was the majority shareholder. With this control, he could expand the company into insurance and several other investments. Now, Berkshire Hathaway is worth over $700 billion with one class A share averaging $473,000 as of March 1, 2022.
His ownership stake in Berkshire Hathaway is 16%. Under its portfolio, the company now has interests in energy distribution, insurance, and railroads plus consumer products.
Related: Warren Buffett Net Worth
6. Larry Page – $112.3 billion
Another one of the tech giants, Larry Page and friend Sergey Brin set out to improve how data would be extracted online. Their search engine could analyze backlinks, and they initially called it Backrub. By 1998, they had made it into a company called Google, where Page was CEO from 1998 until 2001 before coming back again to serve between 2011 and 2019.
Google is the largest and leading search engine, and it has solidified its position by making strategic acquisitions such as that of YouTube (2006) and Android (2005). Google is now a subsidiary of Alphabet since 2015.
In 2021, Google share prices rose to move both Page and Brin further up on the billionaire list. While in March 2020, Page had a net worth of under $52 billion, he right now sits at a neat $120 billion as of March 5, 2021.
7. Sergey Brin – $108.2 billion
Sergey Brin founded Google together with Larry Page and has a 6% stake in Alphabet at the moment.
He has served as president of Technology for Google and Alphabet between 2015 and 2019. Much of Ben's professional focus has been on X, a research laboratory under Alphabet in charge of technologies such as the Waymo self-driving cars and the Google Glass smart classes. His wealth has grown substantially by around 25% in the past 12 months.
8. Larry Ellison – $104.8 billion
Larry Ellison started as a computer programmer working in California before going to Ampex, an electronics company, in 1973. At Ampex, he met the people who would become his partners, Bob Miner and Ed Oates. In 1977, after a brief stint at Precision Instruments, where he was the Vice President of research and development, he found Software Development Laboratories with Miner and Oates.
Within two years, the company had released Oracle, which became the first commercial relational database that used Structured Query Language. It was met with so much success that they changed the company name from SDL to Oracle Systems Corporations in 1982.
Oracle is second only to Microsoft in the software development industry. It provides several computing programs plus Linux Codex Java and the Oracle Exadata computing platform. It is also acquired companies such as PeopleSoft (2005), Siebel (2006), BEA (2008), and Sun Microsystems (2009). As of 2021, Oracle acquired Cerner Corp, a software provider specializing in medical records, for $28.3 billion.
9. Steve Ballmer – $94.0 billion
Steve Ballmer became Microsoft's 30th employee after Bill Gates successfully convinced him to drop out of his MBA program at Stanford University. After Gates stepped down as CEO, Ballmer became CEO in 2000. During his term as CEO, Microsoft bought Skyped for a whopping 8.5 billion in 2011.
He is the largest shareholder of Microsoft where he has share ownership of 4%. In 2014, he acquired a basketball team, Los Angeles Clippers, for $2 billion.
10. Gautam Adani And Family – $90.3 billion
Gautam Adani is an infrastructure tycoon who controls the Mundra Port, the largest port in India. He is the CEO of Adani Group, a portfolio with varied interests, from real estate, commodities, power generation, and transmission to infrastructure.
Adani is also the owner of Abbot Point, a coal mining project in Australia that came under fire by environmentalists, yet its Carmichael coal mine remains one of the largest in the world.
After waiting nine years, Adani finally got permission to work on the coal mine. He also bought 74% of shares from Mumbai International Airport (2020), which is the second busiest in India.
By the look of it, if you want to join the ranks as one of the wealthiest in the world, the most common industries to focus on this far have been technology, luxury goods, and a little bit of value investing.
But it is not a blueprint for success; these are just a handful of industries with thousands of others who have not achieved the same level of success as they have. It might then be generally profitable coupled with creativity as well as great strategies and opportunities.