The wealth of the rich reached $10 trillion — who made the most?
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The wealth of the world's billionaires increased dramatically in 2024. Businessmen from the list of the 500 richest people, including Elon Musk, managed to achieve a total of $10 trillion in total capital. And eight technology companies earned more than $600 billion, which is 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase.
This is stated in the material of Bloomberg.
Who earned the most in 2024
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jensen Huang (co-founder of NVIDIA) were among the lucky ones, helping to achieve a total net worth of $10 trillion. Thanks to the unrestrained growth of tech stocks, the fortunes of Larry Ellison (Oracle), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Michael Dell (Dell), and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have multiplied.
Capital gains among the 500 richest people in the world, as tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, reached $1.5 trillion in 2024, with almost half (43%) earned by the eight tech titans. This was largely driven by the stock market, which exceeded expectations last year, with the S&P 500 index up 24%.
According to the Forbes ranking, which tracks the wealth of the rich in real time, Elon Musk is the undisputed leader in 2024. Thanks to Donald Trump's victory in the US election, Musk has increased his net worth to an unprecedented $442.1 billion, while at the beginning of 2024, the amount was almost $230 billion.
The gap with the second place in the ranking is $237 billion, which is the largest result in the history of the list of the world's richest people. The Forbes top ten includes:
- Elon Musk — $421.2 billion;
- Jeff Bezos — $233.5 billion;
- Larry Ellison — $209.7 billion;
- Mark Zuckerberg — $202.5 billion;
- Bernard Arnault — $168.4 billion;
- Larry Page — $156 billion;
- Sergey Brin — $149 billion;
- Warren Buffett — $141.7 billion;
- Steve Ballmer — $124.3 billion;
- Jensen Huang — $117.2 billion.
Bernard Arnault and other French luxury billionaires were dubbed "losers" in 2024. They suffered large financial losses due to slowing sales, especially in the key Chinese market. Colin Huang, the founder of Pinduoduo and the Temu brand, was also unlucky. The year ended with a $18 billion drop in his fortune.
As a reminder, European stock markets ended 2024 in the red. The biggest losers were stocks in the technology sector and manufacturers of industrial goods. One of the reasons for the decline was the rise in government bond yields, which forced investors to divest from some stocks at the end of the year.
We also wrote that the shares of some South Korean companies fell sharply at the end of December, after the release of the second season of the cult TV series "Squid Game" from Netflix. Artist United Inc., Artist Untited, Wysiwyg Studioc Co. and Dexter Studios Co. collapsed.
