2020s: The Billionaires' Decade?
The number of billionaires worldwide surpassed 3,000 for the first time in 2025, according to the Forbes World's Billionaires List released today. Billionaires' wealth has been undeterred by global crises and was even elevated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when tech stocks soared. While the number of billionaires climbed over the 3,000-people mark rather incrementally, collective billionaire wealth leapt up in 2021, meaning that the individual billionaire has become richer on average. In 2025, as markets are showing themselves once more unimpressed by worldwide upheaveal and insecurity, billionaire wealth took another noticable step up.
The $100 billion club also had a record 15 members as of 2025, the release stated, while three people owned more than $200 billion upon the creation of the list - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. The United States had a record 902 billionaire citizens, almost a third of all worldwide billionaires. China followed behind at 516 billionaires (including Hong Kong) ahead of India at 205. 288 billionaires were added to the list this year, including a first from Albania. Also new on the list are celebrities Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Seinfeld as well as Chipotle founder Steve Ells.
This year's 3,028 billionaires had a collective fortune of $16.1 trillion, or $5.3 billion each. This is in contrast to 2013, when average billionaire wealth stood at just $3.8 billion. While billionaires form the tip of global wealth inequality, they themselves exhibit an unequal distribution of wealth, with the above-mentioned 15 centibillionaires worth $2.4 trillon combined, which is more than the "bottom" 1,500 billionaires on the list own collectively.