Billionaires have a significant impact on philanthropy, politics, and the global economy. According to Forbes, there will be 2,640 billionaires in the globe in 2023. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla as well as the owner of X (previously Twitter), is the richest of them all.
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The people on this list have even more influence and are members of an even more restricted club. Many are the founders of massive technology companies, and a sizable portion of their fortune is still tied to the businesses they founded.
These billionaires can continue to borrow against their wealth to avoid selling shares, delaying or removing the taxes that their heirs would otherwise owe on unrealized capital gains. Because they can use a variety of tax deductions to lower their reported income, several of the billionaires on this list have paid no income tax in recent years.
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Since a significant amount of their wealth is invested in publicly traded stocks, the wealthiest individuals’ net worth fluctuates in lockstep with the market values of the companies they own and control. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks these ten people as the richest people on the planet.
The richest guy on the planet is Elon Musk. Born in South Africa, he first studied at a Canadian university before moving to the University of Pennsylvania to complete his bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics. Musk postponed attending Stanford University’s graduate physics program for two days in order to introduce Zip2, one of the first internet navigation systems. A part of the startup’s profits were reinvested by him to launch X.com, an online payment system that was eventually acquired by eBay (EBAY) and rebranded as PayPal Holdings (PYPL).
7 Britannica. “Elon Musk.”
Musk started contributing significantly to Tesla Motors (now Tesla) in 2004, which helped him advance to the CEO role at the electric vehicle manufacturer. Apart from its electric car range, Tesla also manufactures energy storage devices, car accessories, and solar power systems, which it acquired in 2016 from SolarCity. In addition, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a company that develops space launch rockets, has Musk as its CEO and principal engineer.
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Musk made the decision to withdraw from the takeover in July 2022. To compel Musk to complete the takeover, the business sued him. Musk first filed a countersuit against the business, but he then changed his mind and said he would be prepared to purchase it. With the deal’s official closing in October 2022, he now owns 79% of the business.
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Ah, finance. “Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of ‘Burying’ His Side of the Fight Over Their $44 Billion Deal.”
The head of the world’s largest luxury goods company, LVMH, is French national Bernard Arnault. Louis Vuitton, Hennessey, Marc Jacobs, and Sephora are among the LVMH brands.
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Arnault’s substantial investment in Christian Dior SE, the holding company that owns 41.4% of LVMH, accounts for the majority of his wealth. Through Groupe Familial Arnault, his family-owned holding firm, he has shares in Christian Dior SE and an extra 6.2% in LVMH. 15
Originally trained as an engineer, Arnault first shown his economic aptitude while employed by his father at Ferret-Savinel, the construction company he eventually took over as CEO in 1971. In 1979, he changed Ferret-Savinel into Férinel Inc., a real estate corporation.
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After taking over and restructuring luxury goods manufacturer Financière Agache in 1984, Arnault stayed in charge of the company for an additional six years before selling all of its holdings save Christian Dior and Le Bon Marché. In 1987, he received an invitation to invest in LVMH, and two years later, he rose to the position of CEO, chair of the board, and major shareholder.
18 The Luxebook. “Inspiring: Inside the World of LVMH’s CEO and Centibillionaire Bernard Arnault.”
Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com in a Seattle garage in 1994, not long after leaving the massive hedge company D.E. Shaw. When he first proposed the concept of an online bookshop to David E. Shaw, his former supervisor, Shaw turned him down.
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YouTell. “Amazon Was Nearly Not Started by Jeff Bezos. This Is Why.”
Despite having begun as a book seller, Amazon has evolved into a one-stop shop for everything and is predicted to surpass Walmart as the biggest retailer in the world by 2024. Some of Amazon’s surprise forays into new markets, like its 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods and entry into the pharmacy industry, demonstrate the company’s consistent pattern of diversification.
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Before giving 4% of Amazon to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott as part of their divorce settlement, Bezos owned as much as 16% of the company in 2019. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and increased demand for online shopping in 2020, Amazon’s share price increased by 76%. Bezos became the executive chair of the massive e-commerce company on July 5, 2021, after leaving his position as CEO.
25 20 26 NPR. “Amazon was founded 27 years ago by Jeff Bezos. He now resigns as CEO at a pivotal moment.”
After taking Amazon public for the first time in 1997, Bezos went on to become the first person to have a net worth of more than $100 billion since Bill Gates in 1999. The aerospace company Blue Origin, The Washington Post (which he acquired in 2013), and the 10,000-year clock, commonly referred to as the Long Now, are among Bezos’s other endeavors.
10,000 Year Clock, 19–27. “Welcome to the 10,000 Year Clock Website.”
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The first crewed flight of Blue Origin was successfully conducted on July 20, 2021, by Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Dutch student Oliver Daemen. The aircraft reached a height of over 66 miles before making a safe landing. In the same month, Bezos’s wealth reached its pinnacle at $213 billion.
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In 2008, Gates moved from being the company’s CEO to the position of board chair. He became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway in 2004. He resigned on March 13, 2020, from both boards.
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A significant portion of Bill Gates’ wealth is held in Cascade Investment LLC. Cascade is a privately held investment vehicle that owns private real estate and energy investments in addition to a range of securities, such as Canadian National Railway (CNR), Deere (DE), and Republic Services (RSG).
31 Bloomberg, 40. “Bill Gates.”
While attending Harvard University in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook (now Meta) with fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. When Facebook started to be utilized at other colleges, Zuckerberg left Harvard to concentrate solely on his expanding company. Zuckerberg currently serves as the chair and CEO of Meta, an organization with 3 billion monthly active users as of Q2 2023.
42–43 Meta. “Meta Reports Second Quarter 2023 Results,” page 1.
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The largest social networking site in the world is called Facebook. Since the website is free to use, advertising accounts for the majority of the business’s income.
Meta is also home to a number of other brands, such as the photo-sharing app Instagram, which it purchased in 2012; the virtual reality headset manufacturer Oculus and the cross-platform mobile messaging service WhatsApp, both purchased in 2014; Workplace, its platform for enterprise connectivity; and Portal, its range of video-calling devices.
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The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was established in 2015 by Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, who also serves as co-CEO. Their nonprofit works to improve society by leveraging technology to address issues like increasing access to and quality of education, changing the criminal justice and immigration systems in the United States, lowering the cost of housing, and finally eliminating everything
After Steve Ballmer was persuaded by Bill Gates to leave Stanford University’s MBA program, he joined Microsoft in 1980. He was Microsoft’s thirty-first worker. In 2000, Ballmer succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft. He served in that capacity until resigning in 2014. Ballmer oversaw Skype’s $8.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2011.
Britannica, 52, “Steve Ballmer.”
Ballmer is the largest individual stakeholder of Microsoft, holding an estimated 4% of the software giant. Shortly after leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, Ballmer paid $2 billion to acquire the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.
When Ballmer and Bill Gates were both students at Harvard, they shared a dorm and a floor. When Ballmer began pushing the tech company into products during his stint as CEO—such as the Surface tablet and the Windows mobile phone—their fraternal connection soured.
51 Business Insider. “Steve Ballmer.”
At the age of 14, Warren Buffett, the most well-known value investor alive, filed his first tax return in 1944, reporting revenues from his childhood paper route. In 1962, he began purchasing shares in the textile company Berkshire Hathaway, and by 1965, he had assumed the bulk of the company’s ownership. In 1967, Buffett increased the company’s assets by adding insurance and other ventures.
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Hathaway Berkshire. Pages 24–25 of “Berkshire — Past, Present, and Future.”
Often referred to as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is a buy-and-hold investor who amassed wealth by purchasing undervalued businesses. Berkshire Hathaway has made investments in sizable, well-known businesses more recently. Along with consumer goods, its portfolio of fully owned companies includes interests in railroads, energy distribution, insurance, and insurance.
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“Berkshire — Past, Present and Future,” Berkshire Hathaway, pages 24–25.
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Buffett is a well-known opponent of Bitcoin.
60 CNBC. “Warren Buffett: Cryptocurrency ‘Has No Value’ – ‘I Don’t Own Any and Never Will’.”
Buffett has made charitable giving a major part of his fortune. He donated $41 billion between 2006 and 2020, primarily to his children’s organizations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Alongside Bill Gates, Buffett established the Giving Pledge in 2010.
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Although Buffett is still the CEO at the age of ninety-three, he indicated in 2021 that Gregory Abel, who oversees Berkshire’s non-insurance operations, will most likely take over as CEO.
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Similar to a few software millionaires on this list, Larry Page started his journey to stardom and wealth in a dorm room during his time in college. In 1995, Page and buddy Sergey Brin of Stanford University came up with the idea to enhance Internet data extraction. The two created a brand-new search engine technology that they named Backrub because of its capacity to evaluate page links.
After that, Page and Brin founded Google in 1998, with Page leading the business as CEO twice—from 2011 to 2019 and again until 2001.
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With over 92% of all search queries coming from Google, it is the most popular search engine worldwide. The business bought YouTube, the leading website for user-submitted videos, in 2006.
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Google released the Android mobile phone operating system in 2008 following its acquisition of Android in 2005. In 2015, Google underwent a reorganization and became a division of holding company Alphabet.
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Page was one of the first investors in Planetary Resources, a space exploration and mining firm focused on asteroids. Amidst financial difficulties, the 2009-founded business was purchased by blockchain corporation ConsenSys in 2018. In addition, he has invested in Kitty Hawk and Opener, two firms that make flying cars, despite the fact that Kitty Hawk discontinued operations in 2022.
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In New York City, Larry Ellison was born to a 19-year-old single mother. Ellison left the University of Chicago in 1966 and went to work as a computer programmer in California. He met future business partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner when he started working at the electronics company Ampex in 1973. After working for Precision Instruments for three years, Ellison became vice president of research and development.
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Along with Oates and Miner, Ellison established Software Development Laboratories in 1977. The first commercial relational database program to use Structured Query Language, Oracle, was launched by the business two years later. Due to the success of the database program, SDL renamed itself Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982. Ellison resigned as Oracle’s CEO in
The second-biggest software firm in the world, Oracle offers a broad range of cloud computing applications, Linux and Java code, and the Oracle Exadata processing platform. Over the years, Oracle has acquired a number of major businesses, including Sun Microsystems and Cerner.
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Ellison has made medical research the centerpiece of his charitable giving. He donated $200 million for a new cancer research facility at the University of Southern California in 2016. The Oracle Team USA sailing team, which took home the America’s Cup racing series in 2010 and 2013, was supported by Ellison.
84 BioSpace. “Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison Gives $200 Million to University of Southern California for Cancer Research.”
Born in Moscow, Russia, Sergey Brin moved to the United States in 1979 with his family when he was six years old. After co-founding Google with Larry Page in 1998, Brin became Google’s president of technology when Eric Schmidt took over as CEO in 2001. Following the company’s founding in 2015, he maintained the same position at Alphabet, retiring in 2019 to make way for Sundar Pichai as CEO.
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Google provides a range of online tools and services called Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and more. Google is the leading search engine on the internet. In addition, Google sells a range of electronics, such as the Stadia game platform, Nest smart home appliances, and Pixel smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
In collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Brin has contributed millions of dollars to the study of Parkinson’s disease.
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