On April 3, 2024, Forbes released the 2024 Global Billionaires List. The entry threshold for the list is $1 billion. Although the list itself has little to do with us ordinary netizens, when the list is released, we can't help but take a second look to see the changes and trends inside.
In recent years, the economic environment around the world is not very good, the domestic situation is not good, and the real estate industry continues to be sluggish, which has driven the upstream and downstream industries to be seriously sluggish. Vanke, the top student in the real estate company, has recently broken out all kinds of negative news, and the business situation of the top students is worrying.
But against this backdrop, what about the billionaires, who control the majority of the world's wealth?
Trend 1: The number of people on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2024 and the total wealth are at a new high
According to the list data, the number of people on the Forbes rich list in 2024 will reach 2,781, an increase of 141 people from 2023, and the previous record for the number of people on the list was 2021, with a total of 2,755 people on the list in 2021, an increase of 26 places this year compared with 2021, setting a new record for the number of people on the list;
The total wealth of the richest people on the list reached $14.2 trillion, an increase of $2 trillion from last year, and the previous record for total wealth also appeared in 2021 at $13.1 trillion. This year, the total wealth of the rich has also reached a new high.
This year's list has 14 billionaires with a net worth of 12 figures, and their number is also a record high, with a wealth valuation of $2 trillion, accounting for 14% of the total list, that is, 0.5% of the richest people hold 14% of the wealth of all the richest people on the list, which shows that the law of 28 is also followed among the rich.
Although the world economy is undergoing a major adjustment, the wealth performance of the rich has not disappointed themselves.
The following (Figure 1) is the Forbes list of the world's top billionaires, you can study for yourself:
Figure 1: Forbes 2024 Billionaires List Top 10 in the World
Trend 2: The number of billionaires in Chinese mainland has declined for three consecutive years
The number of Chinese mainland rich lists is closely related to the performance of China's listed companies, which have not had a good time in the past year. There are 406 richest people in Chinese mainland this year, 89 fewer than last year and a full 220 fewer than the record 2021. This performance basically matches the perception of the domestic economic situation.
Although the number is decreasing, the total number of billionaires in Chinese mainland is still the second highest in the world, and it is still worthy of the status of the world's second largest economy. India, the newly populous country, should not be underestimated, with 200 billionaires on the list this year, which is India's new record for the number of people on the list, and the population is indeed the first productive force.
This year, the richest man in Chinese mainland is still the bottled water and tea drink king Zhong Sui, which is the fourth consecutive year that he has topped the list, and his total wealth this year is 62.3 billion US dollars, a decrease of 5.7 billion US dollars from last year, which shows that the verbal criticism of netizens is still useful;
Among the top ten richest people in the mainland, 5 have shrunk their wealth like Boss Zhong, but there are 4 whose wealth levels have grown against the trend, the most dazzling is Huang Zheng of Pinduoduo, whose total wealth this year has reached 38.9 billion US dollars, an increase of more than 8 billion US dollars over last year.
The following (Figure 2) is the details of the top 10 lists in the mainland, you can study for yourself:
Figure 2: Forbes 2024 Rich List Top 10 in China
Trend 3: Although AI has not yet changed human beings, it has begun to change the wealth structure of the rich
At present, AI is an absolute hot topic, and global capital is pouring into this direction, and the global industry is shifting its focus to AI, and the companies that benefit the most are all kinds of companies focusing on AI research and development. And the most popular in the past year should be Nvidia and Huang Sect Leader. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, thanks to the soaring stock price, became one of the world's 20 richest people for the first time this year, with a wealth increase of nearly $56 billion from last year.
Jensen Huang (picture from the Internet)
Looking at the wealth creation performance of the AI industry, two phenomena are very interesting:
First, there are many newcomers. In addition to Huang, Liang Jianhou, the founder of Supermicrocomputer Inc., which has in-depth cooperation with Nvidia, and his wife Liu Qiuzhu also entered the list. OpenAI's Sam Altman entered the list for the first time, and his fortune reached $1 billion, and it is believed that with the rapid development of AI technology, Ultraman's wealth value still has the opportunity to develop rapidly, and in addition, the CEO of the semiconductor company AMD, Su Lifeng, has a personal net worth of $1.2 billion.
In addition to public companies, the founders of AI startups have also doubled their value due to the fact that they have been favored by capital, and the valuation of startups has soared. Zhao Yi, the founder of the multi-functional note-taking software Notion, who is valued at $5 billion and became a billionaire this year because of his stake in the company, and Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure AI, an AI robotics company valued at $2.6 billion, also made the list.
The second is that old trees sprout new shoots. The most typical representative is Zuckerberg of Facebook. After betting heavily on AI, Meta's stock price has risen sharply over the past year, increasing Zuckerberg's net worth by $112.6 billion, returning to the top 10 of the list this year, ranking fourth.
Zuckerberg (image generated by AI software)
I still remember that after Meta failed in the All in Metaverse, Meta successfully turned around by turning and increasing investment in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
Zuckerberg positioned AI as Meta's largest investment area, and plans to focus manpower and resources on it in 2024, in order to promote the development of AI technology, Meta plans to spend billions of dollars to buy Nvidia's computer chips, build a large-scale computing infrastructure, including up to 350,000 NVIDIA H100 graphics cards, this strategy not only accelerates the research and development process of general artificial intelligence, but also enables Meta to make breakthroughs in the field of AI, thereby significantly improving the company's competitiveness and profitability。
I have to sigh how important it is to enter the right industry.
- Today, are you AI?
Trend 4: For the first time, the billionaire list does not have self-made young billionaires on the list?
This is a surprising and amazing phenomenon, once upon a time, self-made people were always easy to praise, has the times changed?
Let's look at the prerequisites of this question first, one is self-made, and the other is young and rich.
The definition of starting a business from scratch is to start a business with your own hands without any financial support, and eventually get the fruits of success.
The definition of a young rich person is relatively broad, and based on what I have searched, it can be understood as a billionaire aged 40 and below.
And note: the threshold for billionaires is $1 billion.
So the problem is specific - there are no new self-made billionaires aged 40 and under this year.
So why is this happening?
First of all, there is now a large number of young people who have become young rich as a result of "inheriting" a lot of wealth. And with the gradual aging of the founding generation, more and more young people will quickly become new young rich people in the future (I won't let go of the specific list, envy and jealousy [tears], if you are interested, you can search for it yourself).
Second, this phenomenon is related to the tech upstarts spawned by the AI boom. The AI boom has not only driven the flow of capital to the tech sector, but also the rise of tech upstarts. Among the new billionaires this year, there are 9 CEOs in the AI field with a combined worth of more than $20 billion, including OpenAI CEO Altman. These tech upstarts have quickly amassed huge amounts of wealth by mastering AI technology and promoting the development of related industries, thus changing the wealth accumulation model and composition of the traditional rich list.
Trend 5: Becoming more and more polarized?
It is already a fact that a very small number of people control the majority of wealth. So with the continuous development of AI technology, and more new technologies, will this phenomenon of wealth monopoly be broken?
At least according to Forbes' list, technology can make more and more young people have huge wealth in the short term, but it may not be so optimistic for a larger number of ordinary people.
This is probably the reason why most people feel that the economic environment is not good and the trends that the wealth list shows are different.
So it's time to think about what we can do in the age of AI.
One final question -
In this round of AI wave, the United States is still one position ahead of China, how should we fight back next?