Top 10 Richest People in the World

Billionaires have an outsized influence on the global economy, politics, and philanthropy. According to Forbes, there will be 2,668 billionaires around the globe in 2022. The wealthiest of them belong to an even more exclusive club and wield even more power. Many of these billionaires are the founders of technology behemoths, and a sizable percentage of their fortune remains invested in the companies they built.
They can, however, borrow against their wealth in order to postpone selling stock, so delaying (or eliminating for heirs) taxes on unrealized capital gains.

Multi-billionaires can also employ various tax deductions to offset reported income, which has resulted in several on this list paying no income tax in recent years.

Because the richest people have so much of their wealth invested in publicly traded assets, their net worth may fluctuate with market prices. For example, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Inc. (TSLA) and the world’s richest person, saw his net worth increase in 2021 due to an increase in Tesla share price (of which he now owns 17 percent)—with Tesla shares rising almost 50 percent in 2021.

Because the richest people have so much of their wealth invested in publicly traded assets, their net worth may fluctuate with market prices. For example, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Inc. (TSLA) and the world’s richest person, saw his net worth increase in 2021 due to an increase in Tesla share price (of which he now owns 17 percent)—with Tesla shares rising almost 50 percent in 2021.

In comparison, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. (FB), fell out of the top ten in February 2022, when Meta’s share price collapsed following a bad financial report. Zuckerberg’s net worth will be $40 billion lower in 2022.

1. Elon Musk

Elon Musk was born in South Africa and attended a Canadian university before attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and economics. Musk dropped out of Stanford University’s graduate physics programme two days after starting in order to launch Zip2, one of the first internet navigation services. He used a portion of this firm’s earnings to develop X.com, an online payment system that was ultimately acquired by eBay Inc. (EBAY) and renamed PayPal Holdings Inc.

Tesla stock increased 740 percent in 2020, vaulting Musk to the top of the wealth rankings. In December 2020, Tesla will become the largest company to join the S& P 500. Musk will become the world’s wealthiest person in January 2021. (a distinction he has retained since).

Musk asked his Twitter followers on Nov. 6, 2021, whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, presenting the matter as a response to criticism of unrealized capital gains as a means of evading taxes.

He then proceeded to sell $16.4 billion in shares during the rest of 2021.

2. Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in a Seattle garage in 1994, shortly after resigning from the hedge fund behemoth D.E. Shaw. 18 He first proposed the notion of an online bookstore to his former boss, David E. Shaw, who was uninterested.
In 2019, Bezos had up to 16 percent of Amazon before giving 4 percent to ex-wife MacKenzie Scott as part of the divorce proceedings. Amazon’s stock price increased by 76% in 2020 due to increased demand for online purchasing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bezos stepped down as CEO of the e-commerce behemoth on July 5, 2021, to become its executive chair.

Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen performed Blue Origin’s first successful crewed flight on July 20, 2021, reaching an altitude of more than 66 miles before safely landing. In the same month, Bezos’ fortune soared at $211 billion.

3. Bernard Arnault

The vast majority of Arnault’s fortune stems from his enormous position in Christian Dior SE, the holding company that owns 41.3 percent of LVMH.
Groupe Familial Arnault, his family-owned holding company, owns 6.2 percent of Christian Dior SE as well as 6.2 percent of LVMH.

Arnault, a trained engineer, first demonstrated his business acumen while working for his father’s construction firm, Ferret-Savinel, which he took over in 1971. In 1979, he changed the name of Ferret-Savinel to Férinel Inc., a real estate company.

4. Bill Gates

Microsoft, the world’s largest software corporation, also manufactures personal computers, publishes books through Microsoft Press, provides email services through its Exchange server, and sells video gaming consoles and associated peripheral devices.

Gates, who was previously Microsoft’s top software architect, was appointed board chair in 2008. In 2004, he was appointed to the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway. On March 13, 2020, he resigned from both boards.

Cascade Investment LLC controls a sizable amount of Bill Gates’ money. Cascade is a privately held investment company that owns Canadian National Railway (CNR), Deere (DE), and Republic Services (RSG) stocks, as well as private real estate and energy ventures.

5. Gautam Adani

Gautam Adani, the founder of Adani Group, will overtake Mukesh Ambani as Asia’s richest person in March 2022. Adani owns major stakes in six key Indian companies through his Adani Group, including a 75% stake in Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, and Adani Transmissions, as well as a 65 percent stake in Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone, a 61 percent stake in Adani Green Energy, and a 37 percent stake in Adani Total Gas.

The Adani Group’s firms have a total market capitalization of $179 billion (as of Apr. 1, 2022). Adani Power, a subsidiary of Adani Group, joined the power generation sector in 2009. Adani Enterprises was founded in 1988 by Adani to import and sell commodities.

6. Warren Buffett

Buffett, dubbed the “Oracle of Omaha,” is a buy-and-hold investor who made his wealth by acquiring undervalued firms. 52 Berkshire Hathaway has recently made investments in significant, well-known corporations. 54 Its fully owned subsidiaries include interests in insurance, energy distribution, railroads, and consumer goods. 55 Buffett is a well-known Bitcoin sceptic.

In 1967, he expanded the company’s operations to include insurance and other ventures. Berkshire Hathaway now has a market capitalization of $705 billion, with a single share of stock (Class A shares) trading for more than $527,760 as of April 1, 2022.

7. Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison was born to a 19-year-old single mother in New York City. Ellison moved to California and worked as a computer programmer after dropping out of the University of Chicago in 1966. He joined the electronics firm Ampex in 1973, where he met future partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner. Three years later, Ellison joined Precision Instruments as vice president of research and development.

Along with Oates and Miner, Ellison co-founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. Oracle, the first commercial relational database programme that use Structured Query Language, was introduced two years later.80 The database programme was so successful that SDL changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982.

After 37 years as CEO of Oracle, Ellison stepped down in 2014. In December 2018, he was appointed to Tesla’s board of directors. 81

Oracle is the world’s second-largest software corporation, offering a wide range of cloud computing applications, as well as Java and Linux code and the Oracle Exadata processing platform.

8. Larry Page

Larry Page, like several other tech millionaires on our list, began his journey to fame and money in a college dorm room. Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the notion of better internet data extraction while attending Stanford University in 1995. The pair created “Backrub,” a new search engine technology named after its capacity to examine “backing links.” Page and Brin went on to co-found Google in 1998, with Page acting as CEO until 2001, and again from 2011 to 2019.

Google is the main internet search engine, handling more than 92 percent of global search requests. In 2006, the corporation purchased YouTube, the leading platform for user-submitted videos.

Google released the Android mobile phone operating system in 2008 after acquiring Android, Inc. in 2005. In 2015, Google reorganised and became a subsidiary of Alphabet, a holding company.

9. Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, has returned to the list of the world’s top ten wealthiest individuals after RIL’s share price soared on Friday to a new record high of Rs 2,800 per share on the BSE, bringing the entire market capitalisation to Rs 18.9 lakh crore.

The oil-to-telecom conglomerate’s stock price eclipsed its previous all-time high of Rs 2,776.40 a share set on Thursday. Mukesh Ambani’s net worth increased by $2.44 billion to $103 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, as the RIL share price reached all-time highs. Mukesh Ambani’s net worth has increased by $13.3 billion so far this year, putting him in third place among the world’s top ten wealth creators in 2022.

RIL shares have gained 16 percent in 2022, compared to a 2.7 percent decline in the BSE Sensex. Since 2015, the stock has shown positive returns every year. RIL stock has generated 46% returns to investors over the previous year. In comparison, Sensex rose 19.6 percent, indicating that RIL shares exceeded the benchmark by a significant margin. The previous session’s RIL stock price increase came after Morgan Stanley upped Reliance Industries’ share target price by 20% as the conglomerate pursued the global blue hydrogen crown.

10. Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, Russia, and moved to the United States with his family when he was six years old. Brin became Google’s president of technology after Eric Schmidt took over as CEO in 2001, after co-founding Google with Larry Page in 1998.

He held the same position at the Alphabet holding company since its inception in 2015, stepping down in 2019 when Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO. In addition to its dominant internet search engine, Google offers a suite of online tools and services known as Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Docs, and Google Sheets, Google Slides, and more.

Google also sells a number of electrical gadgets, such as Pixel smartphones, desktops, and tablets, Nest smart home devices, and the Stadia gaming platform.

Brin spent much of 2019 focused on X, Alphabet’s research unit responsible for cutting-edge technology such as Waymo self-driving cars and Google Glass smart eyewear. In collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation, he has also donated millions of dollars to Parkinson’s disease research. Brin’s fortune has increased by more than 25% in the last year.