Number of People Worth Over $100 Billion Rises to 15

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 7, 9:15AM EST

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The number of people worldwide worth $100 billion or more has risen to 15.
They are mostly Americans, and just a few inherited their wealth.

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Number of People Worth Over $100 Billion Rises to 15 — © Alice Walton and Jim Walton at... (CC BY 2.0) by Walmart

The number of people worldwide worth $100 billion or more has hit 15. All but two are Americans, and all but four made money on their own.

The people who inherited money worth over $100 billion are all part of the Walton family. Their money came from Sam Walton, who started Walmart in 1962. By 1990, Walmart was the largest retailer in the United States. Today, it employs 2.1 million people worldwide. With revenue of about $600 billion, it is number one on the Fortune 500. Jim, Rob, and Alice Walton are worth $117 billion each, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The only two people on the list who are not American are Bernard Arnault, the French founder, board chair, and CEO of luxury goods company LVMH, and Amancio Ortega Gaona, a Spaniard and founder of Inditex fashion group, which includes the Zara and Bershka clothing and accessories store chains. Arnault is worth $188 billion, and Ortega Gaona is worth $107 billion.

Musk, Buffett, Bezos, and Others

Legendary investor Warren Buffett is one of the best-known billionaires.

Elon Musk remains at the top of the list despite a sharp fall in Tesla’s stock, of which he owns 10%. He also owns controlling interests in SpaceX, which has a total value of over $350 billion, and AI company xAI, which has a total value of over $70 billion. Musk’s net worth is $330 billion, down just over $100 billion this year.

Everyone else among the 15 was a founder or early employee of a major tech company. The sole exception is Warren Buffett, who was often called the greatest investor in American history. Most of his wealth comes from his ownership of Berkshire Hathaway. The 94-year-old is worth $156 billion.

The list also includes Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who is worth $222 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, who is worth the same.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is worth $173 billion. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, follows with a net worth of $165 billion. Steve Ballmer, an early employee of Microsoft who was also its CEO from 2000 to 2014, is worth $139 billion.

Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, is worth $156 billion. Sergey Brin, another co-founder, is worth $147 billion. The list is rounded out by Dell founder Michale Dell, who is worth $104 billion.

Given the extent to which many of these billionaires own public company stock, the direction of the market may have more of an effect on the list than anything else.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.