From Billions to Trillions: How the World’s Wealthiest Have Changed Over 25 Years

Comparing the wealthiest individuals today to those from 25 years ago reveals staggering growth in fortunes and a dramatic shift in names. In 2000, Bill Gates led the list of the world’s richest people with a net worth of $60 billion. Today, Gates’ wealth has grown to $105 billion, placing him 15th in the current rankings.

A handful of individuals, including Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Walmart heir Rob Walton, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, have managed to remain in the top 20 over this period. However, maintaining such positions has required exponential increases in wealth. For instance, Ellison’s fortune has more than quadrupled, rising from $47 billion to $217 billion, while Buffett’s net worth has grown over fivefold, from $26 billion to $143 billion, even after donating more than half his Berkshire Hathaway shares since 2006.

Similarly, Walton and Dell have seen their fortunes multiply more than fivefold, from around $20 billion to well above $100 billion. Ballmer and Arnault, however, have achieved even more significant gains, with their net worths soaring from approximately $16 billion and $13 billion, respectively, to $128 billion and $168 billion.

In contrast, some individuals have fallen significantly in the rankings despite modest increases in wealth. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s fortune has risen from $19 billion to $30 billion, pushing him from eighth place in 2000 to 59th today. Others, like Gates’ late cofounder Paul Allen, Aldi founders Theo and Karl Albrecht, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud, and newspaper tycoon Kenneth Thompson, have dropped off the top 10 list entirely.

The contemporary top 10 now includes Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang—names absent from the 2000 rankings. Their rise reflects the meteoric growth of companies like Tesla, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Nvidia over the past two decades.

Notably, a $20 billion fortune in 2000 was sufficient to secure a place in the top 10. Today, that same net worth barely makes the top 100. The combined wealth of the top 10 in 2000 stood at $275 billion, a figure dwarfed by their $2 trillion collective wealth today. Similarly, the 20 richest individuals in 2000 held $406 billion in total, a fraction of their current $3 trillion valuation.

Elon Musk alone is now worth $454 billion, exceeding the combined wealth of the top 20 in 2000.

This evolution underscores the enduring value of companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Berkshire Hathaway, Dell, and Walmart, which have allowed their largest shareholders to retain their wealth over decades. Simultaneously, it highlights the explosive growth of relatively newer players like Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla, Meta, and Nvidia, which have propelled their founders and major stakeholders into the upper echelons of global wealth.

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