- A record-breaking 3,028 people are now billionaires, according to Forbes‘ latest rankings—their combined $16.1 trillion in wealth rivals that of most nations. But the billionaire club would be even wealthier if not for recent market shake-ups. Jeff Bezos alone saw $29 billion vanish between late January and March.
Money is power, and the world’s elite are grabbing enough to outpace the wealth of most countries. They would be even richer if it weren’t for tanking stocks and a troubled S&P 500.
Forbes’ 2025 World’s Billionaires List featured over 3,028 members—the biggest cohort of the global elite the ranking has ever recorded, marking the first time the list has surpassed 3,000 people.
The combined wealth of these entrepreneurs, investors, and heirs sits at $16.1 trillion, up $2 trillion from 2024. The U.S. was home to a record of 902 billionaires, while China and Hong Kong trailed behind at housing 516, and India being the homebase to 205.
Their eye-watering wealth pool of $16.1 trillion is difficult for most to even conceptualize. So to put that into perspective, their collective wealth surpasses the GDP of every single country in the world aside from the U.S. and China.
There were also three people—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos—who made it to the $200 billion club this year. Their net worths alone counter the wealth of nations; Elon Musk’s $342 billion challenges that of Finland; Mark Zuckerberg’s $216 billion is higher than the GDP of Algeria; and Jeff Bezos’ $215 billion outpaces Hungary.
Wealth is snowballing among the 1%, while most barely make ends meet
Billionaires’ $2 trillion wealth surge during 2024 paints a picture of where the global elite is heading. Oxfam found that 204 new billionaires were minted last year—nearly four every week—and looking ahead, predicts there will be at least five trillionaires within a decade.
The data also shows that about 60% of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, monopoly power, or nepotism connections, showing most money was passed down rather than earned through entrepreneurship.
While these elite continue to wield more and more of the world’s wealth, money gets sucked from lower classes. Most Americans report living paycheck-to-paycheck, and the number of people living in poverty has barely budged since the 1990s.
“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable,” Amitabh Behar, international executive director at Oxfam, said in the press release. “Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated—by three times—but so too has their power.”
They would be even richer if it weren’t for tanking stock
The world’s richest people would have even more money to burn if it weren’t for tanking stocks—with some billionaires’ companies hit harder, based on how they wield their power.
Take the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, and his company Tesla for example. The car business’ shares slumped 4% after it recently reported a 13% decline in sales this year. This shortly follows Tesla’s 36% stock plummet during the first three months of 2025—its worst quarter since 2022—that sent about $156 billion of Musk’s wealth up into flames.
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Tesla’s downturn has been connected to Musk’s unpopular involvement in the U.S. government, consumer protests and boycotts ravaging the company’s sales. However, Trump recently suggested that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could be shuttered before the end of its planned 130-day stint. President Trump’s vehicle tariffs won’t do him any favors, either—especially as China is already full-steam ahead in the EV race. Fortune reached out to Tesla for comment.
But it’s not just unpopular entrepreneurs who have fallen out of favor with the stock market right now.
The S&P 500 dropped 7%, Dow Jones dipped 6%, and Nasdaq fell 10% during the first 60 days of Trump’s presidency. And Wall Street’s most dependable bulls are pulling the plug on their original estimates; in the aftermath of the first quarter, strategists at Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, and Yardeni Research all lowered their end-of-year targets for the benchmark.
Many of the world’s richest have been impacted the most by troubled markets; Jeff Bezos lost $29 billion between late January and March, Sergey Brin is down $22 billion, and Bernald Arnault and Mark Zuckerberg each coughed up $5 billion. The billionaires who attended Trump’s inauguration are estimated to have lost $209 billion altogether.
