Richest billionaires in the world add a record $2.2 trillion to their wealth in 2025
The expanding tech, markets, artificial intelligence, and commodities booms around the world propel global billionaires to make $2.2 trillion in 2025.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the 500 richest people in the world increased their combined wealth by a record $2.2 trillion this year as the value of their holdings skyrocketed due to surging markets in everything from stocks to cryptocurrencies to precious metals.
Their aggregate net worth reached $11.9 trillion after Donald Trump’s election victory in late 2024 fueled the increases, which were only momentarily halted by concerns about tariffs in April when the markets plunged, causing the largest one-day wealth wipeout since the epidemic.
As US mega-cap stocks continued to rise due to the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence, Big Tech took the lead. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc., Larry Page, the co-founder of Alphabet Inc., Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., and Larry Ellison, the chairman of Oracle Corp., accounted for around a fifth of all the gains made by Bloomberg’s wealth index.
However, the Bloomberg News report noted that this was a smaller contribution than the previous year, when the same eight billionaires accounted for 43% of the total profits.
Musk was unquestionably the biggest name on the list of the richest people in the world at the start of the year. After contributing about $300 million to Trump’s reelection campaign, he rose to prominence in politics for the first time. He spent the most of the first part of 2025 in Washington, DC, leading the administration’s cost-cutting initiatives.
But in the end, Ellison—rather than Musk—took center stage. In September he briefly surpassed Musk as the richest man in the world, driven by a huge surge in Oracle shares as the long-standing cloud infrastructure business increased its spending on AI.
Although Oracle’s stock has since fallen almost 40% from its peak, Ellison made news at the end of the year for his role in the bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. by Paramount Skydance Corp., which is led by his son David Ellison.
Accomplishments were not limited to the US. The UK’s FTSE 100 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng both saw gains of 22% and 29%, respectively, while the S&P 500 Index reported an annual increase of 17% through December 30.
Copper and rare earths also emerged as commodities of key geopolitical importance, and major holders like Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart and Chile’s Luksic family added billions to their fortunes. Other asset classes performed even better: precious metals had one of their best years in decades amid a rush to safe havens.
Prior to a recent decline, cryptocurrency was also expected to outperform equity returns for the year. Following Trump’s election victory, Bitcoin reached record highs and continued to rise as the government enacted a number of crypto-friendly policies.
However, it erased all of those profits and more during a huge decline that began in October, severely damaging the fortunes of billionaires like Michael Saylor, Changpeng Zhao, and the Winklevoss twins.
Elon Musk, who had a net worth of $622.7 billion and an annual gain of $190.3 billion, Gina Reinhart, who had a net worth of $37.7 billion and an annual gain of $12.6 billion, and Larry Ellison, who had a net worth of $249.8 billion and an annual gain of $57.7 billion, were some of the largest winners.
