Who in the world’s just got richer? The 500 worth over $10 trillion

The huge rise in the value of technology stocks in 2024 has vastly increased the already unimaginable wealth of the world’s 500 richest people, according to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

For the first time, the combined wealth of the super-super rich at one stage hit more than $10tn (€9.7tn), the Bloomberg index revealed.

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang headed the list of billionaires with Musk seeing the highest gain of the year.

His backing of Donald Trump – now President-elect – ahead of the US elections proved a profitable choice. The rise in the value of his companies, including Tesla Inc, SpaceX and xAI, left him with a personal fortune of $442.1bn (€426.7bn), an increase of $213bn (€205.6bn) on the beginning of the year.

Tech firms made millions for CEOs and shareholders

The Bloomberg Index revealed that the $237bn (€228.7bn) gap between him and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, seen on 17 December, was the widest gap ever recorded between the first- and second-ranked names on its index. 

In second place was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Although his company suffered a few costly setbacks from both a large antitrust fine from the EU and investor caution over Meta’s multi billion dollar investment in AI, he still managed to make an additional $81bn (€78.2bn) as shares rose by almost 70% over the year.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang added $76bn (€73.4bn) to his individual wealth on the back of gains from the AI boom. Nvidia’s share value nearly tripled over the year, becoming at one stage, the world’s most valuable company.

According to Bloomberg, citing data from the World Bank, the wealth of these billionaires is similar to last year’s combined gross domestic products of Germany, Japan and Australia.

French billionaires lose out

The fortunes of LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, L’Oreal’s Françoise Bettencourt Meyers and Kering’s François-Henri Pinault fell in 2024 as the luxury goods sector saw big spenders tightening their belts following a period of post-pandemic extravagance.

The luxury goods market was hit by the slowdown of the key Chinese market and the three billionaires were left some $71bn (€69bn) worse off.

Another loser in the 2024 value-added stakes was e-commerce mogul Colin Huang who, as the man behind Temu, was briefly China’s richest person last August. However, he later lost $18bn (€17.4bn) after an uninspiring earnings report saw shares in the company plummeting 29% in a single day.