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Thursday January 09, 2025

Wealth rankings: Who are in Jan 2025’s club of the richest?

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos take top two spots as Mark Zuckerberg overtakes Larry Ellison for the fourth ranking

By Web Desk
January 08, 2025
A combo of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (L) followed by Amazons Jeff Bezos and Metas Mark Zuckerberg. — Reuters/File
A combo of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (L) followed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. — Reuters/File

Forbes' has revealed its latest billionaire rankings and Tesla's CEO Elon Musk sits at the top on the list of world's wealthiest individuals as of January 2025 with a hefty net worth of $415.7 billion.

Musk's fortune saw an increase of over $91 billion since December 1, prompted by SpaceX's — he runs the company as its CEO — successful space missions and valuation of 350 billion USD.

Musk is followed by Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos with $233.5 billion, with Mark Zuckerberg at the third spot on the list with a fortune of $211.4 billion.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has entered the top 10 list for the first time.

Following are the figures and rankings of the richest people according to Forbes world's real-time billionaires as of today:

Elon Musk

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. — Reuters
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. — Reuters

Musk has become a literal tech giant with being the CEO of car company Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX, he is chairman and chief technology of social media company X (formerly known as Twitter) and founder of artificial intelligence company xAI. He owns 13% of Tesla’s stock, as per Forbes.

Musk has also made it big in the US politics after he donated more than $100 million and was named by President-elect Donald Trump as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks during an address to attendees at Access Intelligences SATELLITE 2017 conference in Washington, US, March 7, 2017. — Reuters
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks during an address to attendees at Access Intelligence's SATELLITE 2017 conference in Washington, US, March 7, 2017. — Reuters

With a net worth of $235.4 billion, Bezos established Amazon in 1994 and ran the company as its CEO until 2021 and now remains its chairman.

Amazon shares increased by 5% last year in December, adding about $10 billion to Bezos’ fortune at the end of the year. It is also dominating cloud storage and moved into movie and series production to feed Amazon Prime Video.

From 2018 through 2021, Bezos was the richest person on Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires but slipped to the second spot in 2022 and dropped one more place on the 2024 list.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks in San Jose, California, US, April 18, 2017. — Reuters
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks in San Jose, California, US, April 18, 2017. — Reuters

Zuckerberg, 40, co-founded Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — when he was at Harvard University in 2004. The social media site has become and grown into the world’s largest social network, earning him a fortune of $211.4 billion.

Instagram and WhatsApp also come under Meta Platforms, both of which it acquired and expanded.

Zuckerberg, as the CEO of Meta, owns about 13% of it after making it public in 2012.

Larry Ellison

Co-founder and Chief Executive of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison introduces the companys latest SPARC servers at Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, California March 26, 2013. — Reuters
Co-founder and Chief Executive of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison introduces the company's latest SPARC servers at Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, California March 26, 2013. — Reuters

With a net worth of $204.6 billion, Larry Ellison co-founded the software firm Oracle in 1977 and ran the company as its CEO until 2014, he now serves as chairman and chief technology officer of the company.

Though his company’s share fell more than 9% in December 2024 erasing around $17 billion from his fortune.

Bernard Arnault

Bernard Arnault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, speaks during a press conference to announce a LVMH sponsorship deal for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Grand Palais Ephemere in Paris, France, July 24, 2023. — Reuters
Bernard Arnault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, speaks during a press conference to announce a LVMH sponsorship deal for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Grand Palais Ephemere in Paris, France, July 24, 2023. — Reuters

Bernard Arnault has a net fortune of $167.8 billion as he is chairman and CEO of luxury goods group LVMH.

His father made millions in the construction business and to get his start, Arnault used $15 million from that fortune to buy Christian Dior.

From there, he went on to build the largest luxury goods company in the world with some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands.

Larry Page

Larry Page, CEO and Co-founder of Alphabet, participates in a conversation with Fortune editor Alan Murray at the 2015 Fortune Global Forum in San Francisco, California November 2, 2015. — Reuters
Larry Page, CEO and Co-founder of Alphabet, participates in a conversation with Fortune editor Alan Murray at the 2015 Fortune Global Forum in San Francisco, California November 2, 2015. — Reuters

Larry Page has moved up one rank from last month with his net worth now being $160.4 billion.

He co-founded Google, one of the most used and preferred search engines, with Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford PhD student in 1998 and served as the company’s CEO until 2001 and then again from 2011 to 2015.

Page now serves as a board member of Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder. He was also a founding investor in an asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired in 2018 by blockchain firm ConsenSys.

Sergey Brin

Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin listens to a question during the unveiling of Google Instant during a news conference in San Francisco, California September 8, 2010. — Reuters
Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin listens to a question during the unveiling of "Google Instant" during a news conference in San Francisco, California September 8, 2010. — Reuters

Just as his Google co-founder Page’s fortune skyrocketed in the last month as Alphabet’s shares rose. His fortune now amasses $153.1 billion.

With Page, he currently serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett, Chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway takes part in interviews before a fundraising luncheon for the nonprofit Glide Foundation in New York September 8, 2015. — Reuters
Warren Buffett, Chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway takes part in interviews before a fundraising luncheon for the nonprofit Glide Foundation in New York September 8, 2015. — Reuters 

Buffet, known as the “Oracle of Omaha”, Buffet is considered one of the most successful investors of all time. He is the son of a US congressman and first bought stock at age 11, filing his taxes by the time he was 13. He runs Berkshire Hathaway which owns dozens of companies.

He now has a net worth of $140.6 billion.

Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer was a classmate of Bill Gates at Harvard University. He joined Microsoft as the company’s employee number 30 in 1980 after he dropped out of the MBA programme at Stanford.

Ballmer ran Microsoft as its CEO from 2000 to 2014 and has a fortune of $125.2 billion.

When he left Microsoft, he purchased the Los Angeles Clippers team for $2 billion.

Jensen Huang

With a net fortune of $122.8 billion, Huang’s appearance in the world’s top 10 richest at the start of a month is the first for him.

He co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and is CEO of the company.