The world's 500 richest people became significantly richer in 2024. The unstoppable rise in US tech stocks played a key role in increasing the fortunes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang, as well as the fortunes of Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The world's 500 richest people became significantly richer in 2024. The unstoppable rise in US tech stocks played a key role in increasing the fortunes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang, as well as the fortunes of Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Just 8 tech titans have made more than $600 billion this year, accounting for 43% of the $1.5 trillion among the 500 richest people on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But it was Musk — the so-called “first buddy” of President-elect Donald Trump after his unprecedented support of his campaign — who dominated the list of the world’s richest people in 2024.
His close relationship with the new president has helped boost the value of his companies, including Tesla Inc., SpaceX and xAI. That has boosted his fortune to an unprecedented $442.1 billion, up $213 billion from the start of the year. The $237 billion gap between him and Bezos as of Dec. 17 is the largest in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Trump's election victory multiplied the success: the billionaires represented in the index collectively earned $505 billion in the 5 weeks after the election, which is 34% of the annual amount.
Trump’s victory also sparked a historic rally in digital assets, sending bitcoin above $100,000 for the first time. This was particularly encouraging for cryptocurrency billionaires: Binance Holdings’ Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, saw his fortune rise 60% to $55 billion. Coinbase Global Inc. co-founder Brian Armstrong’s fortune rose more than 50% to $11.1 billion.
The combined wealth of billionaires tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was $9.8 trillion at the close of trading on Monday, down slightly from its peak of $10.1 trillion on Dec. 11 after the post-Christmas sell-off. Their fortunes are comparable in size to the combined gross domestic products of Germany, Japan and Australia that year, according to the World Bank.
The president-elect's fortune has soared to a record high this year, helped by his majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. Despite DJT, as the social media company is called, losing $19.2 million last quarter, its market value has increased by 95% this year to more than $7 billion.
