Top 15 Richest People In The World (2021)
With a few exceptions, 20–20 has been a phenomenal year for the world’s richest people. Billionaire’s wealth rose more than 10 trillion dollars during the covid-19 pandemic, and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk sold their net worth, which increased astronomically. Today, we’re looking at the 15 richest people in the world right now.
Jim Walton is one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. He’s the youngest of the Walton siblings and decided to get involved with the financial arm of the company. Specifically, he runs the family’s Avis Bank, which has more than 16 billion dollars in assets.
He has been involved in political campaigning over the years, but mostly shies away from the spotlight after serving on the Wal-Mart board for more than a decade. He has stepped down regardless. His net worth ballooned to 67.6 billion dollars, making him the 15th wealthiest person on earth.
2 Alice Walton is another Wal-Mart heir. Unlike her brother, she stayed away from the day-to-day operations at Wal-Mart. Walton also has a reputation as a prolific art collector. Her collection is worth many millions of dollars, and her fortune is worth 67.8 billion dollars in total, making her the 14th wealthiest person on earth.
This is an increase of over 20 billion dollars in under a year, all of which came from dividends and stocks from Wal-Mart. If only everyone could make twenty dollars a billion in passive income.
3 Francois Bettencourt Mayar is the wealthiest woman in the world and the 13th richest overall, she is the sole daughter and heiress of Liliane Bettencourt and she currently owns the L’Oreal family of businesses. The French woman is famous for suing her mother while she was dying to gain control of her finances.
The result gave BET Encomia 72.3 billion dollars. She is not renowned for her philanthropy, and due to the scandal with her mother, she has many critics outside of the business. She is known for contributing commentaries to the Bible.
4 Steve Ballmer is the lesser-known Microsoft billionaire. He was not a founding member of Microsoft, but was their 30th employee, meaning he was present from the beginning. He served as the CEO between 2000 and 2014. Though his leadership received mixed reviews, Ballmer managed to walk away with a ton of Microsoft stock. He sold some of it and bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, which turned out to be a great investment, is currently valued at 72.5 billion dollars
Unlike Bill Gates, the former Microsoft CEO does not make philanthropy a priority, meaning that his net worth continues to increase. Sergey Brin co-founded the world’s most used Web site with Larry Page in 1998. That’s right. Brin is one of the masterminds behind Google. He now serves as the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Born in Moscow in 1973, Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of six after raising one million dollars from family, friends and other investors.
The pair launched the company in 1998, headquartered in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. Google held its initial public offering in August 2004, making Brin and Page billionaires. Google has since become the world’s most popular search engine, receiving an average of more than a trillion searches a day in 2016. The somewhat anonymous technocrat has a net worth of 75 billion dollars, making him the 11th wealthiest person on Earth, Amancio Ortega.
It’s not well known outside of his native Spain, but the businessman is almost synonymous with fast fashion. He was the founder of Inditex, which includes fast-fashion chains such as Zara Pullin Bear, Masimo, Duty Burtka, Stradivarius, Oiseau, and Utech, where even though some consumers opted to buy used clothes as their incomes contracted in 2020, Inditex still made an amazing profit. Notoriously private. Few people know much about Ortega, but through tax records, it’s clear that he makes more than 400 million dollars just from dividends every year.
On top of his corporate profits, Ortega is worth 75.2 billion dollars, positioning him in the tenth rank on our list.
Mukesh Ambani may not be a household name like other billionaires on this list, but he is one of the most powerful people in the world. The Yemeni-born Indian business mogul is the chairman and managing director of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd, or R-AL, the foremost company of the Indian energy and materials conglomerate Reliance Group. His net worth currently sits at 75.8 billion dollars, making him the ninth wealthiest person in the world. He has gained more than 25 billion dollars in the last year.
Larry Page is famous for co-founding the now universal search engine Google. These days, Google is just one of the numerous companies falling under the umbrella of Page’s media conglomerate Alphabet. Google makes up more than 87% of the total search engine market, meaning that it earns a colossal total in ad revenue. This helped push Larry Page to the number eight spot on the countdown. The 47-year-old has a net worth of 77.2 billion dollars.
Larry Ellison is the founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation. He is also a major investor in Tesla. In 1977, Ellison and two of his colleagues founded software development labs and soon had a contract to build a database management system, which they called Oracle for the CIA. The company had fewer than 10 employees and revenue of fewer than one million dollars per year. But in 1981, IBM signed on to use Oracle, and the company’s sales doubled every year for the next seven years. Ellison soon renamed the company after its best-selling product.
Now his various financial interests, from cloud computing to hydroponics, have netted him 83.6 billion dollars. This is up more than 20 billion dollars since 2019.
Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is known for his amazing ability to pick stocks with incredible accuracy. Born in Nebraska in 1930, Warren Buffett demonstrated keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965, he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway, overseeing the growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy, and food and beverage industries.
Buffett became one of the world’s richest men and a celebrated philanthropist. The 90-year-old Nebraska native has a net worth of 94.6 billion dollars. This is an impressive feat, though. In 2019, he was the third richest person in the world. In 2020, he has fallen three spots, making him the sixth richest person on earth.
Coming in at number five is Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has more than 2 billion unique monthly visitors, making it by far one of the most visited websites on Earth. All of that attention and real consumer data translates into huge advertisement revenue for Zuckerberg. The 36-year-old has a net worth of 99.2 billion dollars, up more than 30 billion dollars since last year. To put this in perspective, Zuckerberg makes the equivalent of more than one point seven million dollars an hour compared to the American federal minimum wage of seven point twenty five cents an hour.
Zuckerberg is making an absolutely incredible amount of money.
Bill Gates was the 3 richest men in the world for many years. The founder and former CEO of Microsoft have already given more than a third of his net worth to charities through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But despite this, the 65-year-old is worth a whopping 119 billion dollars. Many people believe that Gates set the model for the ethical billionaire. He spearheaded the giving pledge along with Warren Buffett, which encourages billionaires to give the majority of their wealth away while they are still alive.
He also approves of more intensive taxation on billionaires and these days focuses more on philanthropy than on day-to-day operations at Microsoft.
You may not have heard of Bernarda, no, but you’ve certainly seen his products sported by celebrities and ultra-wealthy clientele all over the world. The luxury group he oversees, LVMH, is the parent company of brands like Louis Vuitton, Moey, Shandon, and Hennessy Cognac. Eino controls about half of LVMH, which had a revenue of 53 billion euros in 2019, making him the richest man in France. His total net worth is currently 148 point four billion dollars, positioning him as the second wealthiest person in the world.
In addition to LVMH and oversees further investment and holding vehicles, Groupon now has invested in Netflix and Blue Capital and also took a major stake in French food chain Carrefour. Also, he has invested in food, ARCOM, and a variety of other online ventures, as well as buying princess yachts outright.
Jeff Bezos is the CEO and founder of Amazon. He was the richest man in the world until January 2021 when he was barely overtaken by Elon Musk. Regardless, Bezos made an unbelievable amount of money this year as brick-and-mortar shops closed their doors during the pandemic. Amazon was in a unique position to attract more business as a result. Jeff Bezos gained about eighty-seven billion dollars for a total net worth of one hundred 94.6 billion dollars. This is even after a costly divorce in 2019 that cost Bezos roughly half of his Amazon shares.
Without the divorce, his wealth would be truly unbelievable due to the severe adversity suffered during 2020. Many have called upon Bezos to donate some of his incredible wealth to charity in the last calendar year. His ex-wife, Mackenzie Bezos, gave away four point two billion dollars, whereas Jeff Bezos only gave away 791 million. This is equal to less than point zero 42% of his net worth. Elon Musk had one of the best years of his life, at least financially speaking.
