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Ballmer’s fortune fell by nearly $4 billion in the past month partly due to a slight decline in the price on Microsoft shares. Over the years Oracle has made a series of large acquisitions, buying Sun Microsystems in 2010. Arnault still clocks in at No. 2 richest, but he’s worth about $22 billion less than a month ago, as a result who are the 5 richest people in the world of a nearly 11% drop in the price of luxury goods group LVMH’s share price. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation, a software and database management giant, in 1977 and served as CEO until 2014. Ellison, who also had a stint on Tesla’s board of directors from 2018 to 2022, has ranked high in billionaire lists for several years now.
The CEO of electric carmaker Tesla, Musk also owns stakes in privately held rocket firm SpaceX and social media company X, formerly known as Twitter. The richest woman in the world is Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. As of February 1, 2025, she is worth an estimated $107.1 billion and is the world’s 14th richest person. Her fortune lies in her ownership stake in retailer Walmart, which she inherited from her late father.
During February 2024, In late July, Ellison moved into the No. 4 richest spot, but was overtaken by Zuckerberg in late August. The company’s shares surged by 171% in 2024, culminating in a market capitalisation of $3.28 trillion, making Restaurant Cash Flow Management it more valuable than Microsoft, yet still behind Apple. This change reflects the recent stock performances of their respective companies, with Meta shares rising by approximately 4% to $630.20, contrasting with Oracle’s slight decline of 0.3% to $165.78. The tech leaders, including Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have collectively seen their fortunes grow significantly.
One of the wealthiest clothing retailers in the world owns 60 percent of Inditex, which has about 7500 stores worldwide. In 1975, he opened his first Zara store with his wife, Rosalía Mera. He has invested his income from Inditex dividends into various real estate properties across the world. According to a Financial Times report from 2022, he invested through his company, Pontegadea, and his property holdings were worth $17.2 billion. Buffett created the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2010, asking billionaires to commit to give away at least half their fortune to charitable groups.
The rankings are published annually in March, so the net worths listed are snapshots taken at that time. There are thousands of billionaires on the Forbes list; the excerpts below show only the wealthiest 10 for each year. A small handful of billionaires, relatively retained earnings speaking, didn’t fare so well. A total of 107 people who were on the 2024 ranking are simply no longer rich enough to make the cut.
Musk planned to fund the deal with $21 billion of his own capital. In the run-up to the buyout announcement, Musk sold 9.6 million shares of Tesla, valued at roughly $8.5 billion. In 2004, Musk became a major funder of Tesla Motors (now Tesla), which led to his current position as CEO of the electric vehicle company.
