Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire, topping the 2026 Forbes 400 list with an estimated net worth of $908 billion following SpaceX’s public offering in June.
The 45th annual ranking shows America’s 400 richest people now hold a record $8 trillion combined, up from $6.6 trillion last year.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, takes second place with a net worth of $378 billion. Third place belongs to Larry Page of Alphabet, who earned $278 billion. Next are Michael Dell with $263 billion and Sergey Brin with $256 billion.
Following are Mark Zuckerberg with $212 billion, Larry Ellison with $204 billion, Jensen Huang with $199 billion, Steve Ballmer with $156 billion, and Warren Buffett with $144 billion.
The amount of minimum net worth needed to be on the list increased to $4.4 billion, $600 million higher than last year. This was reported by Forbes, which explained that such an increase is due to the growth in the fortunes of tech founders amid the artificial intelligence and data centre revolution, leaving 590 American billionaires still too poor to make the list.
Also, the AI revolution changes the youngest members of the list. There are ten billionaires under 40 on the list this year, compared to four in 2025. Seven of them are new members of the list, and all of them owe their success to AI.
Four of them come from Anthropic and include Daniela Amodei and Tom Brown, both worth $15.5 billion. Greg Brockman, 37, of OpenAI, is the richest newcomer at $25.5 billion. Steven Hao, 30, cofounder of Cognition, is the youngest member overall at $5.8 billion.
In Florida, Bezos leads as the state’s wealthiest resident, followed by Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($204 billion) and Interactive Brokers chairman Thomas Peterffy ($107 billion). Massachusetts’ richest is Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson at $41.6 billion, while Patriots owner Robert Kraft holds $15.2 billion.
2026-09-16 22:28:00
