So here we are again checking on some updates of the few enormously blessed individuals in the world whose bank accounts are often confused as either half full or half empty.
We’re going to take a look at the top 10 richest people in the world according to the most reputable source on the internet, Forbes’ real-time billionaires ranking as of this publication.
If you want to rather want to watch the content, click on the video down below:
Number 10:
Mukesh Ambani
Net Worth: $ 92.8 billion
The only Indian billionaire on our list, Mukesh Ambani, born in 1957 in the Colony of Aden or presently known as Yemen, is the executive and overseeing chief of Reliance Industries which has earned a reputation on being one of the biggest private-led companies in India, a Fortune 500 organization, and one of the biggest private-segment aggregates in the world with diverse businesses in energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media and textiles.
Mukesh joined forces with the acclaimed Indian media transmission organization ‘Airtel’ and kept an eye on an organization called Jio broadband, which made 1.5 billion clients in only 170 days. Wow, it sounds like they’ve installed some type of magnetic force in there and attracted that number of clients in such a span of time!
On top of that, Mukesh is a man of luxury owning about 4 cars: a Mercedes, Aston Martin, BMW and Rolls Royce; 1 for a vanity van, a Falcon jet, an Airbus jet, a Boeing Business jet and a yacht. Phew! I almost ran out of breath just reading that!
Moving on to Number 9:
Steve Ballmer
Net Worth: $ 95.6 billion
Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, Steven Anthony Ballmer was the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 – 2014, a multinational technology corporation founded by Paul Allen and college friend Bill Gates in 1975, which ranked at No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue and with popular flagship hardware products such as the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of innovative touchscreen personal computers.
Born into a wealthy family, his father being the manager of Ford Motor Company, Steve Ballmer grew up to be an exceptionally brilliant student with over-the-top skills in mathematics. I wish I was that skilled, too!
He graduated from Harvard College and worked for a while at Procter & Gamble and became the very first business manager of Microsoft after dropping out of Stanford Graduate School of Business where his phenomenal success followed. After stepping down from the company Board of Directors in August 2014, Ballmer now turned his focus to another one of his passions—basketball—and is currently the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA. But hey, for avid basketball fans, isn’t that already a luxury?
Number 8:
Larry Ellison
Net Worth: $ 109 billion
Born in 1944 in the Bronx of New York, Lawrence Joseph Ellison is officially joining the $100-billion club as the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer and former chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas and was the second-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization in 2020.
Larry, born to his Jewish mother who is unwed to his Italian-American biological father who worked in the United States Army Air Corps as a pilot, was adopted by his mother’s aunt and uncle when he contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months. He was given by his mother for adoption when he had the disease at a very young age and he reportedly did not meet his biological mother until he turned 48.
Larry Ellison, whose fortune is hugely anchored to Oracle, which he co-founded in 1977, also holds a stake in Tesla worth more than $10 billion.
Among his vast real estate collection includes a mansion in North Palm Beach, which he purchased for a whopping $80 million in 2021, the third-largest oceanfront home in the posh Florida county which has seven bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a theater, wine room, and a lawn big enough to accommodate a helicopter.
He also owns the 43rd largest island in the United States called Lanai located in the Hawaiian Islands with a population of just over 3200. I even get so excited just by renting a small cottage by the beach, what more when you own an entire island?
Number 7:
Sergey Brin
Net Worth: $112.4 billion
Born in 1973 in Moscow in the Soviet Union, Sergey Brin, born to Russian Jewish parents Mikhail and Eugenia Brin who were both graduates of Moscow State University, co-founded Google in 1998 with Larry Page when they were still Ph.D. students at Stanford University.
When he was six, together with his family they immigrated to the United States where he earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. His father is a retired mathematics professor at the University of Maryland while his mother is a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
As Google’s popularity and marketability increased, obviously so is his fortune over the years.
Brin was an early investor in Tesla. In June 2008, he invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, a Virginia-based space tourism company. On a more luxurious side, Brin and Page jointly own a customized Boeing 767-200 and a Dornier Alpha Jet which they pay about $1.3 million a year just to keep them and the other two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield.
Brin was also involved in the Google driverless car project and in September of 2012, at the signing of the California Driverless Vehicle Bill, he even predicted that in a span of five years, robotic cars will be available to the public as means of transportation. Big car companies are for sure delighted to adopt that prediction for free!
Number 6:
Warren Buffett
Net Worth: $114.3 billion
Born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, Warren Buffett, an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate holding company that entirely owns GEICO, Duracell, Dairy Queen, BNSF, Lubrizol, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, Long & Foster, Flight Safety International, Shaw Industries, Pampered Chef, Forest River, and NetJets. It also owns 38.6% of Pilot Flying J, 26.7% of Kraft Heinz Company, 18.8% of American Express, 9.32% of The Coca-Cola Company, 11.9% of Bank of America and 6.3% of Apple. No wonder he is considered one of the most successful investors in the world!
Buffett is a notable philanthropist, having pledged to donate 99% of his fortune to charitable causes such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to which he promised to give away a staggering 83% of his monetary abundance. He, in fact, founded The Giving Pledge in 2009 with Bill Gates, where billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their overflowing wealth.
However, his children will not inherit a substantial proportion of his wealth. According to him, “I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing”.
Number 5:
Larry Page
Net Worth: $116.7 billion
American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur, Lawrence Edward Page is best known as one of the co-founders of Google, along with Sergey Brin who is two spots lower than his colleague or $4 billion behind in ranking. We’re not sure why but we hope this isn’t “friendship over”.
Born in 1973 in East Lansing, Michigan, Larry Page earned his degree in computer engineering at the University of Michigan in 1995. He then took a doctorate program at Stanford where he met Sergey Brin who he began working with devising a search engine that “leveraged Web users’ own ranking abilities by tracking each site’s “backing links”—that is, the number of other pages linked to them.” Well, I don’t know what all that means but all I know is that it was in Larry’s dormitory room where the magic really happened. And voila! Google was born.
In 2005, Page bought a 9,000 square feet Spanish Colonial Revival architecture house in Palo Alto, California after the historic building, which was built between 1931 and 1941 and is on the National Register of Historic Places, had been on the market for years with a price of US$7.95 million. Page also bought a $45-million 193-foot (59m) superyacht called “Senses” in 2011.
Number 4:
Bill Gates
Net Worth: $129.7 billion
Who doesn’t even know who this guy is? People often confuse him as the anti-Christ and has been featured in some conspiracy theory videos circulating on the internet. Ladies and gentlemen, here at the 4th spot– Bill Gates.
William Henry Gates III, born in October 1955 in Seattle, Washington, was the chairman, CEO, president and chief software architect, the largest individual shareholder until 2014, of Microsoft which he co-founded in 1975 with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.
In June 2008, Gates transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft to dedicate full-time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000 where billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortune to charity works. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, owned by Warren Buffett, to focus as a philanthropist in addressing issues including climate change, global health and development, and education.
Bill sure owns a massive amount of luxury not just a private jet but a Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for US$30.8 million at an auction in 1994, and in 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting “Lost on the Grand Banks.” He even had his favorite quote from The Great Gatsby engraved on his ceiling in his huge library at his home.
Number 3:
Jeff Bezos
Net Worth: $180.6 billion
This guy is definitely a familiar face. If he is not your favorite on this list, well at least his biggest fortune is enticing you to add more items to your cart.
Born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, computer engineer, and commercial astronaut. He founded Amazon in late 1994, where he previously served as the president and CEO.
Amazon is an American multinational technology company that focuses largely on e-commerce which has been referred to as “one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world.”
Bezos has expanded his portfolio in many investments that he founded Bezos Expeditions based in Mercer Island, Washington in 2005 to manage his personal and high-profile investments such as Twitter, Airbnb, Uber, Stack Overflow, General Assembly, Workday and Business Insider.
In 2013, Bezos Expeditions funded the recovery of two Saturn V first-stage Rocketdyne F-1 engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean that was affirmatively identified as belonging to the Apollo 11 mission’s S-1C stage from July 1969. This historical debris is currently on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight.
Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company Blue Origin back in 2000. Its New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and completed the first commercial suborbital human spaceflight in July 2021. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
In 2019, Bezos made headlines when he and his wife MacKenzie Bezos divorced. His wealth obviously reduced and catapulted his former wife to the 3rd spot in the rankings for the richest women in the world receiving 25% of Bezos’ Amazon shares, valued at approximately $36 billion.
Number 2:
Bernard Arnault
Net Worth: $187.9 billion
Born in 1949 in Roubaix, France, Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault, is a French businessman, investor, and art collector. He is the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury goods company and controls over 75 brands such as Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loewe, Loro Piana, Kenzo, Celine, Fenty, Princess Yachts, TAG Heuer and Bulgari.
Aside from LVMH, Arnault oversees further investment in Netflix and Blue Capital and also took a major stake in French food chain Carrefour. He has also invested in Boo.com, a sports e-retailer that has been groomed to become the largest in the world and is planned to set up stores in both Europe and America simultaneously.
Over the years, LVMH’s value multiplied fifteen times over and sales and profits increased fivefold and being the 2nd richest man in the world and owning the world’s largest luxury brands, Arnault’s expensive possessions are also in the field of art. His collection includes works by Picasso, Yves Klein, Henry Moore, and Andy Warhol. From 1999 to 2003, he owned an art auction house Phillips de Pury & Company and in 2006, Arnault started building a project of the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
Number 1:
Elon Musk
Net Worth: $238.2 billion
This guy needs no introduction at all. From Tesla to SpaceX, Elon Reeve Musk is definitely a name that you see everywhere on the internet.
Born in 1971 to Canadian mother and South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk is an entrepreneur, business magnate, founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.
In March 2000, X.com, an online bank he co-founded, merged with competitor Confinity Inc., a software company based in Silicon Valley, where Musk was so fascinated into because of its convenient payment system. Its name later changed to PayPal until eBay bought PayPal for US$1.5 billion in 2002 and earned Musk a whopping $165 million out of the sale.
About three-quarters of Musk’s wealth comes from Tesla to which he reportedly does not receive a salary, instead, he agreed to a compensation plan with the board that anchors his personal earnings to Tesla’s valuation and revenue. In other words, Musk only receives compensation if Tesla reaches certain market values. It was the largest deal ever done between a CEO and board, but you definitely sow what you reap in time! In May 2020, he was awarded eligibility to purchase 1.69 million TSLA shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, about $800 million worth.
Musk has shared a portion of his wealth to charity and has “professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth.” In 2012, Musk signed The Giving Pledge founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Not just that, in May 2020 Musk pledged to “sell almost all physical possessions” maybe except for his favorite aircraft, the L-39 Albatros which he used to pilot until 2008. He also uses a private jet owned by SpaceX and acquired a second jet in August 2020.
Now that our listing ends, I pray that your hopes do not! Who knows? Maybe one of us will at least beat Elon in the rankings. You know we’re rooting for you. So, who among them is your favorite? Leave your comments below!
Related: Top 3 Richest Women in the World in 2022
