The fortunes of the world's 500 richest people exceeded $10 trillion this year - Bloomberg

The world's 500 richest people will get significantly richer in 2024, with Ilon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang leading the group of billionaires, conquering a new milestone: a combined net worth of $10 trillion, reports UNN citing Bloomberg.

The indomitable rally in U.S. tech stocks has played a key role in boosting the wealth of the trio, as well as the fortunes of Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The eight tech titans have single-handedly earned more than $600 billion this year, representing 43% of the $1.5 trillion gain among the 500 richest people tracked by Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

But it was Musk - the so-called “first buddy” of President-elect Donald Trump after his unprecedented support for his campaign - who dominated the list of the world's richest people in 2024.

His close relationship with the incoming president has helped increase the value of his companies, including Tesla Inc, SpaceX and xAI. That boosted his fortune to an unprecedented $442.1 billion, $213 billion more than at the start of the year. The $237 billion gap between him and Bezos on Dec. 17 was the largest ever recorded between the first and second-ranked names in Bloomberg's wealth index.

Across the board, the world's richest people benefited from a stock market that defied expectations for 2024. The S&P 500 Index was up 24% by Monday, fueled by a small group of stocks dubbed the “Magnificent Seven,” including Musk's Tesla, Meta Platforms Inc. Zuckerberg and Nvidia Corp. Huang, which accounted for more than half of the stock index's performance.

Trump's election victory added to the gains, with the S&P 500 Index hitting an all-time high on Nov. 6, posting its best post-Election Day performance in history. The billionaires represented in the index earned a total of $505 billion in the five weeks after the election, a 34% year-to-date gain.

Trump's victory also triggered a historic rise in digital assets, pushing bitcoin above $100,000 for the first time. It has particularly boosted crypto billionaires: Binance Holdings' Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, saw his fortune rise 60% to $55 billion. The net worth of Coinbase Global Inc. co-founder Coinbase Global Inc. Brian Armstrong rose more than 50% to $11.1 billion.

The total value of fortunes tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index was $9.8 trillion at Monday's close, down slightly from a Dec. 11 peak of $10.1 trillion after a post-Christmas selloff. Their fortunes are comparable to the combined gross domestic product of Germany, Japan and Australia last year, according to data compiled by the World Bank.

Here are some of this year's biggest winners and losers:

Winners

Donald Trump: The president-elect's fortune has soared to record highs this year, helped by the performance of his controlling stake in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. Despite reporting a $19.2 million loss last quarter, DJT, as the social media company is known, has surged 95% this year to a current market value of more than $7 billion.

Jensen Huang: Nvidia CEO Huang has become one of the biggest individual winners of the AI boom, adding $76 billion to his net worth this year. Nvidia's stock has nearly tripled in 2024, making it the world's most valuable company for the first time in June.

Mark Zuckerberg: Despite a whopping $841 million antitrust fine from the EU and investor doubts earlier this year about the company's multibillion-dollar AI project, Meta's CEO boosted his net worth by $81 billion this year as Meta's stock rose nearly 70%.

Chinese billionaires: Chinese billionaires, including CEO of Tencent Holdings Ltd. Pony Ma, chairman of Xiaomi Corp. Lei Jun and co-founder of Cambricon Technologies Corp. Chen Tianshi, increased their fortunes by 14% in 2024. Their gains offset three consecutive years of losses caused by the ongoing real estate crisis and government crackdowns on big tech companies.

Billionaires under 60: This year, the fortunes of the young billionaires on the list have more than doubled compared to their older counterparts. Billionaires under 60 make up 27% of the index.

Losers

French luxury billionaires: the fortunes of Bernard Arnault, Françoise Betancourt-Meyers and François Pinault, whose fortunes are generated by assets in the luxury goods sector, have suffered heavy losses in 2024. After years of pandemic growth, when luxury shopping crowded out spending on restaurants and entertainment, the slowdown in sales - especially in the key Chinese market - cost the three billionaires a total of $71 billion.

Colin Huang: Huang had the biggest drop in wealth among Chinese billionaires. The e-commerce tycoon behind Tema briefly became China's richest man in August, but ended the year with an $18 billion drop after a poor earnings report caused his company's shares to plunge 29% in a single day.

Ricardo Salinas: the chairman of Grupo Elektra SAB, a Mexican retail and banking conglomerate, lost more than half of his net worth in a single day after his company's stock plummeted following Salinas' claims that he was defrauded by a former financial adviser. Salinas announced last week that he was going to take the company private.

Carlos Slim: Slim, who has large stakes in Latin American companies in the telecommunications, banking, construction and energy sectors, lost $26 billion in 2024. His wealth has been hurt by exchange rates - the peso has fallen about 20% after years of relative strength - and weakening markets since the victory of leftist candidate Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico's presidential election in June.

Pham Nhat Vuong: The Vietnamese tycoon, who has assets in real estate development, retail and healthcare, saw shares in his electric car company Vinfast Auto Ltd. plunge about 70% earlier this year after losses widened and the market soured on his aggressive expansion plans. The stock has since recovered a bit, but the fall cost Vuong nearly half his fortune.