Forbes 2024 Rich List Announced: Zuckerberg Soared by $100 billion, and Jensen Huang entered the top 20 in the world
Reporter: Cai Ding Editor: Lan Suying
On Wednesday, April 3, Beijing time, Forbes released the 2024 (38th) Global Billionaires List, with a total of 2,781 billionaires on the list this year, a record high, an increase of 141 people from last year.
French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault became the world's richest man for the second year in a row, and the famous American singer Taylor Swift became the first artist in history to become a billionaire with only music and acting income with a record-breaking era tour.
An in-depth analysis of Forbes' list this year shows that AI has become the key to wealth creation for the top rich.
For example, Zuckerberg's net worth has increased the most in the past year due to the sharp rise in Meta's stock price, making him jump to fourth place for the first time in history this year, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth has also skyrocketed in the past year, thanks to the surge in demand for AI computing power, allowing him to jump from 78th place last year to one of the top 20 richest people in the world.
Taylor Swift made history by making the list
This year's Forbes Global Billionaires list has a record high of 2,781 billionaires. This year's list welcomed 265 new faces, including fashion designer Christy Rubuto ($1.2 billion), NBA legend "Magic" Johnson ($1.2 billion), TV producer Dick Woolf ($1.2 billion), pop singer Taylor Swift ($1.1 billion), who became a billionaire through concert tours and concert films, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ($1 billion).
In addition to the record number of people on the list, the total wealth of the richest people on the list also set a new all-time record of $14.2 trillion, an increase of $2 trillion from the 2023 list and an increase of $1.1 trillion from the 2021 list. The top 20 performers are particularly strong, with their total wealth growing by $700 billion over the past 12 months.
French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault became the world's richest man for the second year in a row, thanks to record revenue last year for its luxury goods company, LVMH, and his personal wealth rose 10% from 2023 to $233 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is still in second place, with a personal wealth of about $195 billion, an increase of 8% from last year, but due to the fall in Tesla's stock price, this figure is far lower than his previous personal wealth of $300 billion, and Musk was also the world's first billionaire to reach a personal wealth of $300 billion.
Image source: Forbes Chinese Network
In addition, in this year's list, there are 14 billionaires with a net worth of 12 figures, a record number. The total wealth of this group is valued at $2 trillion, up 255% from 10 years ago, meaning that 0.5% of the world's 2,781 billionaires hold 14% of all billionaires.
At the same time, it is worth mentioning that the famous American female singer Taylor Swift became the first artist in history to become a billionaire only with music and acting income, with a personal fortune of $1.1 billion.
Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is the highest-grossing music tour in history and the first to surpass $1 billion in revenue. This also makes the Grammy winner earn a lot of money in 2023. Taylor Swift's extended concert tour added about $4.3 billion to U.S. GDP in 2023, as reported by Bloomberg last October. Just a day before Forbes announced Taylor Swift as a billionaire (April 2), Taylor Swift also won the prestigious Artist of the Year award at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Compared with last year, 189 billionaires fell off the list this year. Thirty-two billionaires have died in the past year, including Egyptian business tycoon Mohamed Fayyad, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and Jimmy Buffett, singer of the song "Margarita Town".
In terms of Chinese mainland richest people, Nongfu Spring Chairman Zhong Zheng ranked 24th with a net worth of $62.3 billion, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, ranked 27th with a net worth of $43.4 billion, and Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo, ranked 33rd with a net worth of $38.9 billion......
AI becomes a password for wealth growth: Zuckerberg's assets have grown the most
In this year's list, 66% of billionaires are self-made, meaning they have all accumulated wealth through entrepreneurship rather than inheritance, down from 69% in 2023.
Among them, 17 billionaires have made the list due to the recent record highs of crypto assets such as Bitcoin. In addition, AI is also the wealth code of the rich.
In dollar terms, Meta CEO Zuckerberg's net asset value has increased the most in the past year, adding a total of $112.6 billion, or 174.8%, and ranking fourth on the list, with a net asset value of $177 billion, which is also Zuckerberg's highest ranking on record. Meta's stock price has nearly tripled in the past year, surging its market value by $116.2 billion through cost-cutting and big bets on artificial intelligence and the metaverse. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is fifth with a net worth of $141 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has attracted much attention, ranks 20th on the list with a net worth of $77 billion. In last year's list, Huang ranked 78th, with a net worth of just $21.1 billion. However, in just one year, benefiting from the explosion of generative AI and the strong global demand for AI computing chips, Nvidia has also become a "shovel seller in the AI era", and its stock price has risen by more than 200% in the past year.
Image source: Forbes.com
Image source: Google Finance
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the world's most sought-after AI unicorn, was also on the list this year, but since he does not own a stake in OpenAI, his wealth mainly comes from the investments he made during his tenure as president of Y Combinator, a startup incubator, from 2014~2019. He invested in Stripe in the early days, and took a stake in Reddit and fusion startup Helion.
The reporter of "Daily Economic News" noticed that there are more than a dozen "new faces" from the AI field on this year's rich list, including Charles Liang, co-founder, chairman, president and CEO of Supermicro Computer (net worth of about $6.1 billion) and his wife Liu Qiuzhu (net worth of about $1.5 billion), CEO of Chaowei Semiconductor Su Lifeng (net worth of about $1.3 billion), and Nvidia Board of Directors and managing partner of Square Wave Investment Company Harvey L. Harvey C. Jones (net worth of about $1 billion).
Among them, Supermicro Computer has become the "most bullish AI stock" in the past year by virtue of its accumulation in the server field. Judging from the data of the past 12 months, its stock price rose by 980%, even surpassing the "seven technology giants" of the US stocks. Liang Jianhou thus became the third Chinese to engrave his name in the AI core circle after Huang Jenxun and Su Lifeng.
Image source: Google Finance
Overall, the frenzied pursuit of AI has generally boosted tech stocks, with the total wealth of global tech billionaires increasing by about $750 billion to $2.6 trillion in just one year, more than any other industry.
In addition to the aforementioned billionaires, other tech bigwigs who have benefited from generative AI include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dyer, Steve Ballmer, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, all of whom have at least $20 billion more than last year. (Note: Musk is classified by Forbes as a billionaire in the auto industry, so he is not counted in the tech industry.) ）