Who is currently the richest person in the world? Are you curious how much capital the ten richest people in the world have accumulated? The list of billionaires shows the net worth of each of them. We discuss the profiles of each billionaire. In the entry you will find, among others: Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
What is the Bloomberg Billionaires Ranking?
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a ranking presenting the richest people in the world. There are a total of 500 items on the list.
It is updated continuously, every day. Therefore, individual values may vary. This will depend on when we analyzed the ranking. This entry covers data from the first half of January 2023. More specifically, it is data from January 13.
So let’s get to what everyone is waiting for.
Who are the world’s top five billionaires?
Bernard Arnault
First place goes to Bernard Arnault. He is a 74-year-old French entrepreneur. He specializes in the consumer industry. His current fortune is $184 billion.
What was the career of this billionaire? His father managed the Ferret-Savinel development company, and his son joined him after graduating. Only 8 years later, he took over his father’s role and became president himself.
A few years later, he bought the holding company Financière Agache. Its activities mainly included trade in luxury products. Then he took over the bankrupt Christian Dior company. Currently, it is this that generates the greatest profits.
In 1989, he became president of Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH). The company sells the following products:
- clothing,
- Kenzo perfume,
- jewelry,
- TAG Heuer watches,
- Henessy cognac,
- Dom Perignon champagne,
- and the Sephora chain of stores.
In 1999, Arnault tried to take over the Gucci fashion house. He failed to do so, although he promised to try again.
In 2015, he joined the group of the 100 most powerful people in the world.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a 52-year-old entrepreneur from South Africa. He specializes in the technology industry. His fortune is currently $132 billion.
He founded the following companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. He is also the creator of the Starlink project, and also created the Zip2 online service that enabled navigation. It was one of the first services of this type on the market. He invested the money he earned thanks to it in developing an online payment system. Then eBay bought it from him – today we all know it as PayPal. Recently, Musk also owns Twitter.
It is worth mentioning that Tesla offers not only electric cars, but also solar panels and energy storage batteries. SpaceX delivers satellites to Earth’s orbit. Musk maintains that he would like to send people to Mars and eventually create a system that would enable interplanetary travel.
Neuralink is a business with which he wants to make a connection between the human brain and a computer. He plans to achieve this by implanting an implant in the brain. According to the project’s assumptions, it will be possible, for example, for a paralyzed person to communicate using thoughts. Both with the computer and the surroundings.
Some say that some of the projects he is involved in may prove groundbreaking for all of humanity.
Gautam Adani
Gautam Adani is a 61-year-old Indian businessman. Currently, his fortune is $119 billion. Operates in the industrial sector.
He is the founder of the international conglomerate Adani Group. It consists of companies that offer services in the following areas:
- renewable energy,
- oil and gas,
- food processing,
- Electricity,
- infrastructure,
- port management,
- mining,
- aircraft.
As a teenager, he decided to drop out of college and went to Bombay to start selling diamonds. Some time later, his brother purchased a plastics company. Soon, Adani decided to join him and became the head of the company’s management board.
In 1988, he opened his own company – Adani Enterprises. Since the beginning of the business, Adani has been involved in the import and export of goods.
He is the president of the Adani Foundation, which focuses on Indian social programs. Adani also owns the largest port in India.
It is worth adding that he is the first Indian citizen to be so high in the international ranking of the richest people.
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is a 59-year-old American entrepreneur. He specializes in the technology industry. His fortune is $118 billion.
Bezos is the founder of Amazon – the largest online store in the world. It offers products from almost every category – from electronics to food. He created this company in 1994 in his garage, so he started just like other major players. Interestingly, at the very beginning, Amazon was simply an online bookstore.
The businessman purchased the Whole Foods chain of grocery stores. Later, Bezos decided to introduce streaming and this is how Amazon Prime Video was created, which is still popular today.
Then he created a place to store data in the cloud, i.e. Amazon Web Services. Many companies and corporations use this infrastructure. Thanks to the sale of part of the shares in Amazon, Bezos also decided to buy The Washington Post.
In 2000, he opened another business, this time related to the space industry – Blue Origin. Its goal is to build manned orbital and suborbital transport systems. According to Bezos, it was created to be able to use the unlimited resources of space.
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett is a 93-year-old American businessman. He is treated as an authority in the field of investing. Some call him the “Oracle of Omaha.” His fortune is $111 billion.
He started his first job at the age of 12, and just 2 years later he made a small investment.
His first major investment was buying out part of the shares of Berkshire Hathaway, which was heading towards bankruptcy. Some time later, he bought more shares, thanks to which he became its majority owner. At the beginning it was a textile company, which later changed its business profile. A few years later, Buffett introduced it to the insurance industry by purchasing the National Indemnity Company.
Then the company also bought shares in the well-known insurance company – GEICO. Currently, Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest companies in the world. Its subsidiaries include: Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom and FlightSafety. In addition, he also has shares in Kraft Heinz Company, Bank of America, Apple and American Express.
Who else can we find on the list of the richest people?
Bill Gates
Bill Gates is a 68-year-old American businessman and philanthropist. He is an IT specialist by profession, specializing in the technology industry. His current fortune is $111 billion.
Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft, an international technology corporation. He created it in 1975 in partnership with Paul Allen, his childhood friend. He decided to drop out of Harvard to devote himself to a company that was just starting up.
In 2000, he resigned as the president of Microsoft, devoting himself mainly to charitable activities. However, he continued to sit on the company’s supervisory board until 2020, when he left the management board for good.
Microsoft created the Windows operating system that is used by people all over the world. It is still one of the leading software on the market.
In 2000, he and his wife created a philanthropic organization called the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is the largest charitable foundation in the world. Its goal is to fight poverty, disease and all inequalities in society. He has already allocated over $50 billion to this foundation.
Since 1987, he has been included in the ranking of the richest people in the world prepared by Forbes magazine.
Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison is a 79-year-old American businessman. Operates in the technology industry. His net worth is currently $98.2 billion.
He is the co-founder of Oracle Corporation, a software development company. It includes systems enabling database management, and its specialization is enterprise services.
Oracle offers a cloud data storage platform. This involves, among others, with backing up our data. The service is not intended only for companies, it can also be used by individual customers.
Mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani is a 67-year-old Indian businessman. It operates mainly in the energy industry. His fortune is $85.7 billion.
He manages the international conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited. He uses it to control companies from the petrochemical industry. His brother takes care of the rest of the family business.
One of his companies also manages a 4G wireless network in India.
Ambani owns the world’s largest refinery complex. It was mainly thanks to him that he became a millionaire. In addition, he also manages a real estate complex on the Indian market.
Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer is a 67-year-old American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He specializes in the technology industry. His fortune is $85.5 billion.
In 1980, he started working at Microsoft. He became a business manager in the company of his college friend, Bill Gates. He climbed the career ladder until, in 2001, he became the company’s president. He served as CEO at Microsoft for 13 years.
It is worth mentioning that the Xbox console was created under his leadership. In addition, he was responsible for the introduction of Windows Vista.
In 2014, he took over the basketball team – Los Angeles Clippers. In the same year, together with his wife, he founded the Ballmer Group. This is an organization that aims to support poor American families.
Larry Page
Larry Page is a 50-year-old American programmer. His fortune is $85.3 billion.
Page is the co-creator of Google – the most popular search engine in the world. He created it together with Sergey Brin in a dorm room.
In 2015, they founded Alphabet, which took over Google’s subsidiaries. Thus, the company controls Google, Calico, Nest Labs, as well as Google X, Google Capital and Google Ventures.
In December 2019, Sergey Brin stepped down as president and Larry Page resigned as director.
Today, Alphabet is a conglomerate that deals with, among others:
- technology,
- investments,
- scientific research,
- biological sciences.
Summary
Inflation has been rising all over the world for a long time, and many people are also talking about an economic crisis. How does this translate to the richest people in the world? It’s hard to believe, but some on this list have recently reached financial heights. Let’s take as an example the first person on the list, Bernard Arnault. Since the beginning of the year, it has increased by as much as PLN 20 billion. At the same time, this is the highest value of his assets in the annual review.
Also noteworthy is the absence of Mark Zuckerberg, who was third in this ranking in 2020. Currently, he is only in 24th position, which is largely related to the decline in Meta’s shares.
No comments