Yes, thousands of billionaires exist. As of early 2025, there were over 3,000, with their numbers and wealth, often exceeding $16 trillion collectively, reaching record highs. Figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg represent some of the wealthiest, with several possessing net worths in the hundreds of billions.
As monopolies have tightened their stranglehold on industries, billionaires have seen their wealth skyrocket to unprecedented levels. The number of billionaires topped 3,000 for the first time in 2025, while the world's richest man, Elon Musk, became the first person whose net worth surpassed half a trillion dollars.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $619 billion. After Musk is Larry Page, co-founder of Alphabet (Google). Other billionaires with some of the largest net worths include LVMH's Arnault, Amazon's Bezos, and Meta's Zuckerberg.
How Can I Become a Billionaire? It isn't easy to become a billionaire, especially if you haven't already made millions. You will need time, patience, investment savvy, and entrepreneurship to become a billionaire unless you are born into a family with billions that you stand to inherit.
The typical billionaire could easily afford to spend $80 million each year, while most Americans earn less than $60,000. We crunched the numbers and found the value of $1 for the average American equates to $1,355 for the typical billionaire.
No single group holds exactly 90% of the world's wealth, but extreme concentration exists, with the top 10% of the world's population owning the vast majority, around 75-85% of global wealth, leaving the bottom 90% with a small fraction, while the richest 1% owns a huge chunk of that, sometimes as much as the bottom 90% or more combined, according to reports from the World Inequality Database and Oxfam.
Yes, Taylor Swift is officially a billionaire, having first joined the ranks of the world's wealthiest in October 2023, with her net worth estimated by Forbes at $1.6 billion in late 2025. Her wealth primarily comes from her successful music catalog, massive earnings from The Eras Tour, and significant real estate holdings, making her the first musician to reach billionaire status mainly through her music and performances, notes Forbes.
Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$690 billion as of January 2026, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $788 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in SpaceX and Tesla.
📊 From an FBI raid to becoming the world's youngest self-made billionaire at 27 — Shayne Coplan built Polymarket into a $1B+ prediction-market giant despite the company never making a profit.
Another common place where billionaires keep their money is in securities. Securities are financial investments and instruments with some value that can be traded, oftentimes on public markets. Common types of securities include bonds, stocks, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Billionaire Brendan Foody, 22, is defying the stereotype that Gen Z doesn't like hard work. Foody is one of the trio of 22-year-olds from the Bay area who went from debate teammates to self-made billionaires on the back of a huge funding round for their AI recruiting startup, Mercor.
Elon Musk has just gotten even closer to being the first-ever trillionaire after a court reinstated his Tesla stock options worth billions. According to Forbes's billionaires index, the Tesla chief executive's net worth climbed to $749bn (£559bn) on Friday, making Musk the first person to surpass the $700bn milestone.
Key Takeaways. Top earners across the United States earn nearly least six figures, with an average income of over $99,971 for those in the top 10% in 2022. Earners in the top 1% need to make $1 million annually in states like California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington.
Kylie Jenner has publicly shared diagnoses and struggles including Postpartum Depression (PPD), chronic back pain after her second pregnancy treated with stem cell therapy, and a past diagnosis of Recurrent Corneal Erosion Syndrome, a painful eye condition, as noted in various news reports from 2020 to 2025.
Thanks to the value of her back catalogue and record-breaking Eras tour, Forbes estimates she is worth $1.6 billion. Trump, however, has real estate all over the world, as well as stocks and cryptocurrency holdings. Taken together, he is worth about $5.1 billion.
