Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk top the 2024 list. How they moved to get to where they are and what they invest in.
The billionaires who top the Forbes 2024 list not only know how to maintain their fortunes in an adverse world, but also make them grow.
Seven of the 10 richest people in the world are richer than last year, thanks to the shares of their companies. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, in 2023 fell below 50th place and is now fifth.
Elon Musk, despite the fierce criticism he receives for having bought Twitter and turning it into X, managed to pass the French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault and today is the richest man on the planet.
One by one: who they are and where they come from
Elon Musk
Net worth: $251.3 billion
Source: Tesla, SpaceX, X (Twitter)
Age: 52
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: USA
Elon Musk is CEO of electric car company Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, and X, formerly Twitter.
Musk was born in South Africa and moved to Canada before he turned 18 and immediately set to work studying and graduating from Queens University at the same time.
He later graduated in Economics and Physics from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1995 he moved to California to attend Stanford University, but founded the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal and decided to dedicate himself fully to the company. This venture was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. That same year, Musk co-founded the online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was purchased by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company, of which he is CEO and chief engineer. In 2003, he joined electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as president and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a technology services company. solar energy which was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company promoting friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on the development of brain-computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. He also agreed to purchase major US social network Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.
Net worth: $200.7 billion
Source: LVMH/luxury goods
Age: 74
Residence: Paris
Citizenship: France
He comes from a family of builders who gave him a small fortune to start, but he knew how to make his own way. Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of LVMH, created the world’s largest luxury goods company with some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands. Among its most notable: Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Moet & Chandon and Sephora. In January 2021, LVMH acquired jeweler Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion.
To begin with, Arnault asked his father for a “loan” to buy Christian Dior. All five of Arnault’s children work in parts of the LVMH empire. In January 2023, Arnault appointed his daughter Delphine to head Dior, the group’s second brand.
Net worth: $168.4 billion
Source: Amazon
Age: 59
Residence: Medina, Washington
Citizenship: USA
Jeff Bezos is the living legend of the man who created an empire from his garage. Amazon began as an online bookstore at a time when few people bought products online. The company also grew to master cloud storage and moved into movie and series production to feed Amazon Prime Video.
Bezos surpassed Bill Gates to become the world’s richest person in July 2017. He and Gates swapped the number one and two richest spots from time to time. Bezos was the world’s richest person on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires from 2018 to 2021; fell to second richest on the 2022 billionaire list. He fell to fourth richest, but returned to third place on January 25, 2023 when the fortune of India’s Gautam Adani (previously third richest) fell. ).
In 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced; As part of the deal, she got 4% of Amazon shares and he kept 12%. He has since sold and given away more of his stake and owns just under 10% of the company. Since Amazon went public in 1997, Forbes estimates it has sold more than $27 billion in stock.
Net worth: $135.3 billion
Source: Oracle
Age: 79
Residence: Woodside, California
Citizenship: USA
Larry Ellison was born in the Bronx, he is the son of a single mother who gave him up when he was 8 months old and he is the clear example of the entrepreneur who gets ahead with nothing going for him.
He never graduated from anything. With Ed Oates and Bob Miner he founded a consulting company called Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977, and later obtained a contract with the CIA to design a special “Oracle” key-coded database system.
Over the years, Oracle has made a number of large acquisitions, including purchasing Sun Microsystems in 2010 for $7.4 billion. In 2012, Ellison purchased the Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. He moved from California to Lanai in 2020, but kept his homes in California and Nevada. Ellison invested in Tesla and served on the car company’s board of directors from 2018 to August 2022.
Net worth: $125.3 billion
Source: Facebook/Meta
Age: 39
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: USA
The books say Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook (now called Meta Platforms) when he was a student at Harvard University in 2004, although the legend remains that he stole the idea.
We don’t know if the idea was his, but he knew how to maintain himself: when Facebook was getting older, it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. He is the son of Karen Kempner, a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, and grew up with his three brothers in a small Jewish community.
At Ardsley College, Zuckerberg excelled in classes. He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, a private school in New Hampshire, in his junior year, where he earned awards in science (mathematics, astronomy and physics) and in classical studies. In his youth, he also attended the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer camp.
Zuckerberg started using computers and writing software in high school. In high school, he built a program that allowed all the computers between his house and his father’s dental office to communicate with each other.
The rest is history known to everyone
Net worth: $119.6 billion
Source: Microsoft, investments.
Age: 68
Residence: Medina, Washington
Citizenship: USA
As a teenager, Gates became passionate about programming and ended up dropping out of Harvard to co-found the software company Microsoft with his high school friend Paul Allen.
They created one of the first software programs available for the nascent personal computer industry.
He was CEO of the company for 25 years and remained chairman until 2014. Today he has investments in dozens of companies, including waste disposal company Republic Services and farm equipment maker Deere & Co., and is one of the largest owners of agricultural land in the USA
Net worth: $118.6 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 93
Residence: Omaha, Nebraska
Citizenship: USA
Warren Buffett heads the investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens of companies, including the insurer Geico, the battery maker Duracell and the Dairy Queen restaurant chain. The son of a U.S. congressman, he bought stocks for the first time at age 11 and filed taxes for the first time at age 13.
Buffett created the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2010, asking billionaires to pledge to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable groups. Buffett has said that he would donate 99% of his fortune. He has so far donated at least $51.5 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to the Gates Foundation and his children’s foundations. That makes him the most generous billionaire on the planet. In mid-June, Buffett gave away $4.6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares. During December 2023, his fortune fell by about $700 million, amid a slight drop in Berkshire Hathaway’s share price.
8.Larry Page
Net worth: $117.2 billion
Source: Google
Age: 50
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Citizenship: USA
Back when everyone was using Yahoo!, Page co-founded the search engine Google with fellow Stanford PhD student Sergey Brin. It was 1998 and both managed to create a giant that today dominates the daily life of the world.
He served as CEO until 2001 and from 2011 to 2015. He now serves on the board of directors of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and remains a majority shareholder.
Page was one of the founding investors in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain company ConsenSys in 2018.
Net worth: $112.4 billion
Source: Google
Age: 50
Residence: Los Altos, California
Citizenship: USA
He came to the United States from Russia with his family in the 1970s, and is the richest immigrant in the country. He co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998 after the two met at Stanford University while studying advanced degrees in computer science.
Although he resigned as president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, he remains a majority shareholder and member of the board of directors.
His fortune increased by approximately $5.1 billion during December 2023 amid a nearly 6% rise in Alphabet’s share price.
Brin, who revealed more than a dozen years ago that he is at higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than the general population, has donated more than $1.1 billion to advance research into the neurodegenerative disease, with a pronounced emphasis on the advancement of basic science.
Net worth: $112.2 billion
Source: Microsoft, investments.
Age: 67
Residence: Hunts Point, Washington
Citizenship: USA
A classmate of Bill Gates at Harvard University, he joined Microsoft as employee number 30 in 1980 after leaving Stanford University’s MBA program. He led Microsoft as CEO from 2000 to 2014.
When Ballmer retired from Microsoft, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers team for $2 billion. Forbes now values the team at $4.65 billion.
Ballmer’s fortune fell by approximately $600 million in the month.