The World's Billionaires
Another year, another set of records broken by the planet’s wealthiest. Despite some global economic turmoil — plummeting oil prices, weakened Euros, ruinous rubles — it was still a pretty good year for billionaires overall.
Exactly how much are the world’s billionaires worth? $7.05 trillion, according to FORBES’ latest ranking — besting last year’s record-breaking $6.4 trillion sum by a hefty $650 billion. The jump is driven in part by 290 newcomers, our biggest freshman class, which helps push the total number of billionaires in the world to 1,826, the highest number we’ve ever recorded.
While anyone with enough loot to make our count is well within the top 1% worldwide, income inequality is present even among this group: the richest 500 individuals collectively hold $4.7 trillion of that $7.05 trillion total. That translates to just over a quarter of billionaires accounting for two thirds of the wealth on our list.
What follows below is a simple list of those 500. You’ll find a mix of fresh faces like taxi cartel capsizers Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp (whose ridesharing service, Uber, is worth more than $40 billion) and the usual suspects like Bill Gates, who retains the top spot, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk.
| Rank | Name | Net Worth | Age | Source | Country of Citizenship | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | #1 | Bill Gates | $79.2 B | 59 | Microsoft | United States |
 | #2 | Carlos Slim Helu | $77.1 B | 75 | telecom | Mexico |
 | #3 | Warren Buffett | $72.7 B | 85 | Berkshire Hathaway | United States |
 | #4 | Amancio Ortega | $64.5 B | 79 | Zara | Spain |
 | #5 | Larry Ellison | $54.3 B | 71 | Oracle | United States |
 | #6 | Charles Koch | $42.9 B | 79 | diversified | United States |
 | #6 | David Koch | $42.9 B | 75 | diversified | United States |
 | #8 | Christy Walton | $41.7 B | 60 | Wal-Mart | United States |
 | #9 | Jim Walton | $40.6 B | 67 | Wal-Mart | United States |
 | #10 | Liliane Bettencourt | $40.1 B | 92 | L'Oreal | France |
 | #11 | Alice Walton | $39.4 B | 65 | Wal-Mart | United States |
 | #12 | S. Robson Walton | $39.1 B | 71 | Wal-Mart | United States |
 | #13 | Bernard Arnault | $37.2 B | 66 | LVMH | France |
 | #14 | Michael Bloomberg | $35.5 B | 73 | Bloomberg LP | United States |
 | #15 | Jeff Bezos | $34.8 B | 51 | Amazon.com | United States |
 | #16 | Mark Zuckerberg | $33.4 B | 31 | United States | |
 | #17 | Li Ka-shing | $33.3 B | 87 | diversified | Hong Kong |
 | #18 | Sheldon Adelson | $31.4 B | 82 | casinos | United States |
 | #19 | Larry Page | $29.7 B | 42 | United States | |
 | #20 | Sergey Brin | $29.2 B | 42 | United States |
