Top 500 wealthiest individuals amass over $10 trillion in 2024
An indomitable rally in US tech stocks plays a key role in turbocharging the wealth of industry titans.
The world’s 500 richest people got vastly richer in 2024, with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang leading the group of billionaires to a new milestone: A combined US$10 trillion net worth.
An indomitable rally in US technology stocks played a key role in turbocharging the trio’s wealth, as well as the fortunes of Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The eight tech titans alone gained more than US$600 billion this year, 43 per cent of the US$1.5 trillion increase among the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But it was Musk – the so-called “first buddy” of president-elect Donald Trump after unprecedented support for his re-election campaign – who dominated the world’s wealthiest in 2024.
His close relationship with the incoming president helped increase the value of his companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. That boosted his fortune to an unprecedented US$442.1 billion, up US$213 billion from the beginning of the year. The US$237 billion gap between him and Bezos on Dec 17 was the largest ever recorded between the first and second-ranked names on Bloomberg’s wealth index.
Across the board, the world’s wealthiest benefited from a stock market that defied expectations in 2024. The S&P 500 Index gained 24 per cent up till Monday (Dec 30), powered by the small group of stocks dubbed the “Magnificent Seven”, including Musk’s Tesla, Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms and Huang’s Nvidia, which accounted for more than half of the stock benchmark’s performance.
Trump’s election win added to the gains: The S&P 500 hit a then all-time high on Nov 6 in its best post-Election Day performance in history. The billionaires represented on the index gained a combined US$505 billion in the five weeks following the election, 34 per cent of the yearly total.
Trump’s victory also sparked a historic rally for digital assets, pushing Bitcoin above US$100,000 for the first time. That especially boosted crypto billionaires: Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, saw his wealth surge 60 per cent to US$55 billion. The net worth of Coinbase Global co-founder Brian Armstrong rose more than 50 per cent to US$11.1 billion.
The total value of the fortunes tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was US$9.8 trillion at Monday’s close, down slightly from a Dec 11 peak of US$10.1 trillion following a post-Christmas sell-off. Their wealth is similar in size to last year’s combined gross domestic products of Germany, Japan and Australia, according to data compiled by the World Bank.
Here are some of this year’s biggest winners and losers:
Winners
Donald Trump: The president-elect’s fortune soared to record highs this year, boosted by the performance of his majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group. Despite reporting a US$19.2 million loss last quarter, DJT, as the social media company is known, gained 95 per cent this year, to a current market value of over US$7 billion.
Jensen Huang: Nvidia CEO Huang has been one of the biggest individual winners of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom so far, adding US$76 billion to his net worth this year. Nvidia’s stock nearly tripled in 2024, and it became the world’s most valuable company for the first time in June.
Mark Zuckerberg: Despite a blockbuster US$841 million antitrust fine from the European Union and early year hesitation from investors about the company’s multibillion-dollar AI push, the Meta CEO added US$81 billion to his net worth this year as Meta stock gained nearly 70 per cent.
Chinese billionaires: Chinese billionaires, including Tencent CEO Pony Ma, Xiaomi chairman Lei Jun and Cambricon Technologies co-founder Chen Tianshi, added 14 per cent to their fortunes in 2024. Their gains reversed three straight years of losses spurred by an ongoing property crisis and government clampdowns on powerful tech firms.
Billionaires under age 60: The younger billionaires on the list grew their wealth more than twice as much as their older counterparts this year. Billionaires under 60 make up 27 per cent of the index.
Losers
French luxury billionaires: The fortunes of Bernard Arnault, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and Francois Pinault, whose wealth comes from holdings in the luxury goods sector, took big losses in 2024. After years of pandemic-fuelled gains, when luxury shopping supplanted spending on dining and entertainment, slowing sales – especially in the key Chinese market – cost the three billionaires a total of US$71 billion.
Colin Huang: Huang had the biggest wealth decline among Chinese billionaires. The e-commerce mogul behind Temu briefly became China’s richest person in August, but ended the year down US$18 billion after a lacklustre earnings report sent his company’s shares plummeting 29 per cent in a single day.
Ricardo Salinas: The chairman of Grupo Elektra SAB, a Mexican retail and banking conglomerate, lost more than half of his net worth in a single day after his company’s stock tanked following Salinas’ claims that he was scammed by a former financial adviser. Salinas announced he would be taking the company private last week.
Carlos Slim: Slim, who has major stakes in Latin American businesses across the telecom, banking, construction and energy sectors, saw his net worth decline by US$26 billion in 2024. His wealth was hurt by exchange rates – the peso fell about 20 per cent after years of relative strength – and flagging markets after leftist candidate Claudia Sheinbaum’s June victory in Mexico’s presidential election.
Pham Nhat Vuong: The Vietnamese mogul, who has holdings in property development, retail and health care, saw shares in his electric vehicle company Vinfast Auto fall about 70 per cent early in the year after losses widened and the market soured on its aggressive expansion plans. The stock has since recovered some ground, but the decline cost Vuong nearly half of his fortune.
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