According to Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s richest people, 390 new billionaires have emerged in the world in the last year. This means, on average, more than one new billionaire per day. This figure was the second highest increase recorded after 2021, when 493 people became billionaires for the first time, driven by the post-pandemic economic recovery.
This year’s new billionaires include two famous musicians, a well-known film director, a tennis legend and the brother of the richest person in the world. The wealth of these names, who come from 40 countries and regions in total, is approximately 755 billion dollars, with an average per capita of 1.9 billion dollars.
USA ranks first
The USA ranks first in the number of new billionaires with 106 people. Among these are the two richest new names on the list:
Edwin Chen – Founder of artificial intelligence company Surge AI ($18 billion fortune)
Peter Mallouk – CEO and majority shareholder of financial planning firm Creative Planning ($16.1 billion)
China is second with 55 new billionaires, including three from Hong Kong. At the top of the list are the founders of artificial intelligence model companies:
Liu Debing (Zhipu) – $9.1 billion
Yan Junjie (MiniMax Group) – $7.2 billion
Germany ranks third with 42 people and India ranks fourth with 30 people.
Famous new billionaires
One of the most well-known names to make the list was Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. The singer and songwriter has amassed a fortune of nearly $1 billion thanks to her music sales, concert tours and art collection investments with her billionaire husband Jay-Z.
One of the legends of the hip hop world, Dr. Dre is also among the names included in the list this year. After selling the Beats by Dre headphone brand to Apple for approximately $3 billion in 2014, his fortune reached $1 billion.
Another famous name that made the list is tennis legend Roger Federer. His fortune is estimated at $1.1 billion, thanks to his 20 Grand Slam titles and his investment in Swiss sneaker company On Running.
James Cameron, one of Hollywood’s famous directors, also entered the billionaire list this year. The fortune of Cameron, the director of films such as Titanic, Avatar and Terminator, is estimated at 1.1 billion dollars. The Canadian director, who won 3 Oscars and 4 Golden Globes in his career, is the second most successful director in history in terms of box office revenue (Steven Spielberg ranks first with a fortune of approximately $7.1 billion).
Billionaires who create their own wealth
Approximately two-thirds of the new billionaires are self-made. Among them are the three 22-year-old co-founders of AI-based recruiting platform Mercor:
Brendan Foody
Adarsh Hiremath
Surya Midha
The fortune of each of them is estimated at 2.2 billion dollars. Midha is the youngest of the trio and is currently the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.
Another name that entered the list is Kimbal Musk. The majority of his wealth comes from his brother Elon Musk’s small shares in Tesla and SpaceX companies. Kimbal Musk’s fortune is estimated at 1.4 billion dollars.
The new richest woman on the list
The richest woman on the list this year is Jennifer Gilbert, who is divorced from Dan Gilbert, founder of Rocket Mortgage and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His fortune is estimated at 5.7 billion dollars.
This year, 76 new female billionaires entered the list, and only 12 of them created their wealth themselves. The richest self-made woman among the new billionaires is China’s Zhou Xiaoping. His fortune is $3.8 billion, thanks to Changzhou Xingyu Automotive Lighting Systems, which he founded with his father in 1993.
youngest billionaire
The youngest new name on the list was 20-year-old Amelie Voigt Trejes. Trejes, whose fortune is $1.1 billion, became a billionaire thanks to the inheritance of his grandfather, Werner Ricardo Voigt, one of the co-founders of the Brazilian electrical equipment manufacturer WEG.
Trejes is just three weeks younger than German pharmaceutical heir Johannes von Baumbach, who made the list last year. Trejes’s 22-year-old brothers, Felipe and Pedro Voigt, are among the new names on the list this year with the same fortune.
Sectors where billionaires emerge the most
This year, the manufacturing sector was the field that produced the most new billionaires. 91 people who produced different products, from semiconductors to automobile parts, from paint to bicycles, became billionaires.
The richest new name in this industry: Wang Xin – founder of Dtech Technology ($5.6 billion)
In second place: Lin Tsung-Chi – Founder of furniture hardware company King Slide Works ($5.1 billion).
The technology sector ranked second with 70 new billionaires. Many of them have made fortunes thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence. For example: Perplexity founders: Aravind Srinivas, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski and Denis Yarats ($2.1 billion each), Cursor founders: Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger and Michael Truell ($1.3 billion each).
The finance and investment sector ranks third. 51 new billionaires entered the list in this field. Among them: Financial advisor Omani Carson ($1 billion), Greg Abel, who replaced Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway in January ($1 billion). Although 63-year-old Abel’s fortune is $148 billion behind his mentor’s, he has many years to narrow this gap in the Forbes list.
