Until recently, a $100 billion net worth granted entry to the world’s most exclusive club. Soaring fortunes in the AI era have made $200 billion the new number to beat.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $200 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows.
They’re individually worth more than some of America’s biggest companies: PepsiCo, Uber, Walt Disney, and Intel were valued around $200 billion each at Thursday’s market close.
Luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault, the LVMH CEO, is close to rejoining the elite club, as his fortune has swelled by around $18 billion this year to $194 billion. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang could be knocking on the door soon, as their fortunes stand at $181 billion and $176 billion, respectively, as of Thursday’s close.
The six existing members of the $200 billion club are collectively worth around $1.7 trillion, led by two men in leagues of their own: Musk on $457 billion and Ellison on $317 billion.
For a sense of scale, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, one of the world’s biggest companies with around 400,000 employees, generated $371 billion of revenue last year and has a $1 trillion market value.
The half-dozen individuals have grown $330 billion richer as a group this year, with Ellison up $124 billion, Page up $76 billion, and Brin up $70 billion as of Thursday. At the start of this year, only Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg were worth more than $200 billion, the rich list shows.
The ultra-exclusive club has doubled in membership within 10 months because of the immense buzz around AI, which has boosted the stock prices of Big Tech companies and the fortunes of their largest shareholders.
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Oracle has surged 54% year to date, lifting the value of Ellison’s roughly 40% stake in the enterprise-software giant. Alphabet has jumped 49%, meaning Brin and Page’s stakes of around 6% each are worth more than ever. The upshot is that all three have crossed the $200 billion mark, with Ellison blowing past that point.
Huang and Ballmer also own pieces of AI-leading firms. Nvidia, which briefly became the first $5 trillion company on Wednesday, has seen a 51% stock surge this year. Shares of Microsoft, which recently crossed $4 trillion in market value before retreating, are up 25%.
Those stock surges have added $62 billion and $34 billion to Huang and Ballmer’s respective fortunes this year, propelling them closer to $200 billion each.
There’s no guarantee that the AI stock boom will keep pushing the ultrawealthy’s fortunes higher, but if it does, the $200 billion club could get a lot more crowded.
