Who’s the Richest Person in the World Right Now?

Ever wondered who’s sitting on the biggest pile of cash on the planet? The billionaire rankings move every single trading day. A good earnings report can add tens of billions to a fortune overnight, and a bad week on the stock market can wipe out just as much.

The last 18 months have been especially wild. SpaceX went public and briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Warren Buffett handed over the top job at Berkshire Hathaway. And the AI boom has pushed a couple of new faces into the top 10.

Below you’ll find who’s on top right now, how they made their money, what drives them and a few words of wisdom from each one. If you like this kind of thing, check out our rich list of internet entrepreneurs too.

Net worths as of November 2026, per the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list (3 November 2026). Figures are rounded to the nearest billion and change daily.

Highlights

• Richest person in the world: Elon Musk, $879 billion
• Richest woman in the world: Alice Walton, $136 billion
• Richest person under 40: Mark Mateschitz, $43 billion
• Richest person of all time: Mansa Musa, an estimated $400 billion (adjusted for inflation)
• Richest person whose wealth was inherited: Rob Walton & family, $150 billion

The 10 Richest People in the World Right Now

1. Elon Musk: $879 Billion

Elon Musk is still comfortably the richest person on Earth, and by a huge margin. He’s worth more than double the number two on this list. Most of his fortune now sits in SpaceX rather than Tesla. SpaceX went public on 12 June 2026 at a valuation of nearly $2 trillion, and Musk owns about 38% of it including options. That made him the world’s first trillionaire on day one, although his fortune has since slipped back below the $1 trillion mark.

The deals have come thick and fast. In 2025 his AI company xAI took over X (formerly Twitter), and in February 2026 SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. Musk, 55, also owns nearly 11% of Tesla, where he has been CEO since 2008, plus stakes in The Boring Company and Neuralink. Want the full breakdown? Read our deep dive on Elon Musk’s net worth.

What motivated Elon Musk?

Musk has always said he’s driven by big problems rather than money: making humanity a multi-planetary species, speeding up the shift to sustainable energy and building advanced AI. He taught himself to code as a kid in South Africa and sold his first video game, Blastar, for about $500.

Best motivational quote by Elon Musk:

“I operate on the physics approach to analysis. You boil things down to the first principles or fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there.”

Assets owned: About 38% of SpaceX (including xAI and X), nearly 11% of Tesla, plus stakes in The Boring Company and Neuralink.

2. Jeff Bezos: $366 Billion

Jeff Bezos started Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994, selling books online. Thirty years later it sells just about everything, and its Amazon Web Services cloud business powers a huge slice of the internet. Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021 to become executive chairman, and he still owns about 8% of the company.

Bezos, 62, has plenty going on outside Amazon. He owns The Washington Post and rocket company Blue Origin, which Forbes now values at around $130 billion. He has pledged $10 billion to climate causes through his Bezos Earth Fund. For more on how he built his empire, read our 15 business lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

What motivated Jeff Bezos?

Bezos famously left a well-paid Wall Street job to start Amazon because he saw that internet usage was growing at more than 2,000% a year. He used what he calls a “regret minimisation framework”: imagining himself at 80 and asking which choice he’d regret more.

Best motivational quote by Jeff Bezos:

“I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.”

Assets owned: About 8% of Amazon, Blue Origin, The Washington Post and a large property portfolio. He was also an early angel investor in Google, putting in an estimated $250,000 in 1998.

3. Larry Page: $232 Billion

Larry Page co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 while the two were PhD students at Stanford. Together they invented PageRank, the algorithm behind Google’s search engine. Page was CEO of Google twice, and then of its parent company Alphabet from 2015 until he stepped down in 2019.

Page, 53, keeps a famously low profile these days, but he remains an Alphabet board member and, with Brin, a controlling shareholder. Alphabet’s push into AI has sent his fortune soaring. He overtook Michael Dell to become the world’s third-richest person at the end of October 2026.

What motivated Larry Page?

Page has always been drawn to huge, slightly crazy ideas. Even as a student he wanted to download the entire web onto his computer. He’s a big believer that technology can solve the world’s biggest problems, and he backs clean energy and flying car projects.

Best motivational quote by Larry Page:

“You never lose a dream; it just incubates as a hobby.”

Assets owned: A roughly 6% stake in Alphabet (mostly super-voting shares), plus investments in flying-car and clean energy start-ups.

4. Michael Dell: $219 Billion

New to our top 10! Michael Dell started selling computers out of his University of Texas dorm room at 19, and grossed $80,000 by the end of his first year. He dropped out, and Dell went on to become one of the biggest PC makers in the world. Today he’s chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, formed by his $60 billion merger with storage giant EMC in 2016.

Dell, 61, has been one of the AI boom’s biggest winners, as companies race to buy the servers that run AI. Much of his fortune also sits in his private investment firm, DFO Management, which owns the Four Seasons Maui. In 2025, he and his wife Susan pledged $6.25 billion to seed investment accounts with $250 each for 25 million American children.

What motivated Michael Dell?

Dell saw that computers were being marked up massively by middlemen. His big idea was to cut them out and sell direct to customers, built to order. That simple insight turned a dorm-room hustle into a global business.

Best motivational quote by Michael Dell:

“I’m guilty of doing too much, and I’m guilty of not seeing mistakes coming. What I’m not guilty of is making the same mistake twice.”

Assets owned: Dell Technologies (he’s the largest shareholder), a big slice of the proceeds from Broadcom’s $69 billion purchase of VMware, and DFO Management’s holdings in hotels, property and corporate credit.

5. Sergey Brin: $214 Billion

Sergey Brin moved to the US from Russia aged six, after his family faced anti-Semitism. He met Larry Page at Stanford, and the two founded Google in 1998. Google went public in 2004 and became part of Alphabet in 2015.

Brin, 53, stepped down as president of Alphabet in 2019 but remains a board member and controlling shareholder. He has since returned to the office to work on Google’s Gemini AI models. Away from work, he has given more than $2 billion to Parkinson’s research.

What motivated Sergey Brin?

Brin wanted to organise the world’s information and make it useful to everyone. He has said he cares more about being remembered for innovation and doing good than for money.

Best motivational quote by Sergey Brin:

“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.”

Assets owned: Just under 6% of Alphabet, plus a family office and a large charitable foundation focused on Parkinson’s and climate.

6. Mark Zuckerberg: $209 Billion

Mark Zuckerberg was just 19 when he started Facebook from his Harvard dorm in 2004. He took it public in 2012, and in 2021 the company renamed itself Meta Platforms. Meta also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and it has shifted its focus from the metaverse to AI.

Zuckerberg, 42, still owns about 13% of Meta. He and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged to give away 99% of their Meta shares during their lifetimes. Find out more in our article on Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.

What motivated Mark Zuckerberg?

Zuckerberg has always said he wanted to connect people. He turned down early buyout offers, including a reported $1 billion from Yahoo, because he believed Facebook could become far bigger.

Best motivational quote by Mark Zuckerberg:

“We may not have the power to create the world we want immediately, but we can all start working on the long term today.”

Assets owned: About 13% of Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads), plus property in Palo Alto, Lake Tahoe and Hawaii.

7. Jensen Huang: $175 Billion

Jensen Huang co-founded chipmaker Nvidia in 1993 and has been CEO ever since. Nvidia’s graphics chips first took over gaming, and now they’re the engine of the AI revolution. In 2025, Nvidia became the first company ever worth more than $5 trillion.

Huang, 63, was born in Taiwan and sent to a boarding school in rural Kentucky as a child, where he cleaned the toilets every day. He later worked as a waiter at Denny’s, where Nvidia was later dreamt up. He owns about 4% of Nvidia.

What motivated Jensen Huang?

Huang bet early that graphics chips could do far more than run video games. He stuck with that bet for decades, through some lean years, until AI proved him right.

Best motivational quote by Jensen Huang:

“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.” (Speaking to Stanford students at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit in March 2024, where he argued that resilience is built through hardship.)

Assets owned: About 4% of Nvidia, plus a family foundation that has funded engineering centres at Stanford and Oregon State University.

8. Larry Ellison: $160 Billion

Larry Ellison co-founded software giant Oracle in 1977 after building databases for the CIA. He stepped down as CEO in 2014 but is still chairman and chief technology officer, and he owns roughly 40% of the company.

Ellison, 82, has had a rollercoaster ride. In September 2025 he became only the second person ever worth more than $400 billion, as Oracle’s stock soared on AI cloud deals. It has since fallen back sharply, which is why he’s dropped from second place to eighth. He also owns nearly half of Paramount Skydance, formed when Paramount merged with his son David’s Skydance in 2025.

What motivated Larry Ellison?

Ellison never finished college and loves proving people wrong. He has always been fiercely competitive, in business and in sailing, where his team won the America’s Cup twice.

Best motivational quote by Larry Ellison:

“When people start telling you that you’re crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life.”

Assets owned: Roughly 40% of Oracle, nearly 50% of Paramount Skydance, almost all of the Hawaiian island of Lanai (bought for $300 million in 2012) and a large property portfolio.

9. Warren Buffett: $158 Billion

Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” is one of the greatest investors of all time. He bought his first stock at 11 and turned Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile mill into a giant that owns Geico, Duracell, Dairy Queen and dozens of other businesses.

At 96, Buffett retired as Berkshire’s CEO at the end of 2025, handing the job to Greg Abel. He has promised to give away more than 99% of his wealth and has already donated over $72 billion. Learn more in our guide on how to think like Warren Buffett.

What motivated Warren Buffett?

Buffett loved the idea of compounding money from an early age. He still lives in the Omaha house he bought in 1958 for $31,500, which says a lot about what motivates him. It’s the game, not the spending.

Best motivational quote by Warren Buffett:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

Assets owned: His Berkshire Hathaway shares make up almost all of his fortune.

10. Steve Ballmer: $158 Billion

New to our top 10! Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 as employee number 30, after dropping out of Stanford’s MBA program. He’d met Bill Gates as an undergraduate at Harvard, and he ran Microsoft as CEO from 2000 to 2014.

Ballmer, 70, kept most of his Microsoft shares when he retired, and he says he’s the company’s largest individual shareholder. That stake has grown hugely as Microsoft’s cloud and AI businesses boomed. In 2014 he bought the LA Clippers basketball team for $2 billion, a team Forbes now values at $7.5 billion.

What motivated Steve Ballmer?

Ballmer is famous for his boundless energy (search for “developers, developers, developers” if you’ve never seen it). He has always been motivated by competition and by turning big ideas into businesses that scale.

Best motivational quote by Steve Ballmer:

“Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.”

Assets owned: Roughly 4% of Microsoft, the LA Clippers and the Intuit Dome arena, and USAFacts, the non-profit government data site he founded.

Richest Woman in the World: Alice Walton, $136 Billion

Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the richest woman on the planet, ranked #14 overall. Unlike her brothers Rob and Jim, she never sat on Walmart’s board. Instead she has poured her energy into art and philanthropy.

In 2011 she opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and in 2025 she welcomed the first students to her new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. Her art-collecting career started when she was 11, with a 25-cent print of a Picasso.

Richest Person Under 40: Mark Mateschitz, $43 Billion

Mark Mateschitz, 34, is the richest person in the world under 40. He’s the only child of the late Dietrich Mateschitz, who co-founded Red Bull in 1987. When his father died in 2022, Mark inherited his 49% stake in the energy drink giant, which sells more than 12 billion cans a year.

He stepped down from his job at Red Bull to focus on being a shareholder, saying: “I don’t believe in being both an employee and a shareholder in the same company.” The richest self-made person under 40 is OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, 37, worth about $26 billion.

Richest Person of All Time: Mansa Musa

Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire in West Africa in the 14th century, and he’s widely considered the richest person who ever lived. His kingdom produced a huge share of the world’s gold and salt.

His wealth is impossible to measure precisely, but estimates often put it at around $400 billion in today’s money, and some say it was simply “incomprehensible.” On his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, he reportedly handed out so much gold in Cairo that he caused inflation in Egypt for years.

Richest Person Whose Wealth Was Inherited: Rob Walton, $150 Billion

Rob Walton is the eldest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, and with his family he’s worth about $150 billion, ranked #11 in the world. He took over as Walmart’s chairman when his father died in 1992 and stayed in the role until 2015.

The Walton heirs together own about 45% of Walmart’s stock. In 2022, a group led by Rob bought the NFL’s Denver Broncos for $4.7 billion. His brother Jim is right behind him at #12, worth about $147 billion.

The Richest People in the World: Final Thoughts

So there you have it. Elon Musk is out on his own at the top, and the AI boom is reshaping the rest of the list, lifting Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, Jensen Huang and Steve Ballmer.

What do they nearly all have in common? Most of them built their fortunes themselves, starting with a simple idea and the stubbornness to keep going when others thought they were crazy. You don’t need billions to start. You just need to start.

Rankings change every day, so we’ll keep this list updated. Who do you think will be number one next year? Let us know in the comments!