Elon Musk, Larry Ellison Lead As World's 10 Richest Add More 2025 Wealth Than Netflix, AT&T Combined

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk ended 2025 as the world's richest person with a wealth of $619 billion. Musk recently became the first person to ever hit the $600 billion milestone and he could be in for more gains in 2026 thanks to a reported SpaceX IPO and a new pay package at Tesla.

• Tesla shares are experiencing downward pressure. Why are TSLA shares declining?

Musk wasn't the only billionaire to see their wealth grow dramatically in 2025. Here's a look at the top 10 richest people in the world and how their wealth compares to some of the most well-known public companies.

Top 10 Richest People 2025

The S&P 500 gained 16.6% in 2025, with many top stocks up for the year, helping to increase the wealth of billionaires whose fortunes are tied to publicly traded companies.

The soaring stock prices helped boost the wealth of the ultra-wealthy, with the top 10 richest people in the world gaining a combined $578.64 billion in 2025. The 2025 total gains of the 10 richest people in the world outdid the $518 billion gained by the group in 2024.

Here are the top 10 richest people in the world at the end of 2025, as reported by Bloomberg, with their 2025 gains:

1. Elon Musk: $619 billion, +$187 billion
2. Larry Page: $269 billion, +$101 billion
3. Jeff Bezos: $253 billion, +$14.6 billion
4. Sergey Brin: $250 billion, +$91.8 billion
5. Larry Ellison: $247 billion, +$55.2 billion
6. Mark Zuckerberg: $233 billion, +$26.0 billion
7. Bernard Arnault: $208 billion, +$31.6 billion
8. Steve Ballmer: $168 billion, +$21.9 billion
9. Jensen Huang: $154 billion, +$40.1 billion
10. Warren Buffett: $151 billion, +$9.44 billion

Just missing out on the top 10 was Michael Dell, who recently pledged a portion of his fortune to help fund the Trump Accounts with money for young children.

Together, the top 10 billionaires ended 2025 worth $2.55 trillion, which would rank as the fifth-largest company in the world.

To put the huge wealth of the group in perspective, the 10 individuals are now worth more than the wealth of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), $1.66 trillion, and Walmart (NASDAQ:WMT), $888 billion, combined, with those two companies totaling $2.548 trillion in valuation.

The $578.6 billion gained would rank 18^th among publicly traded companies and is higher than the valuations of many well-known companies.

To put the gains in perspective, the $578.64 billion is greater than the following:

• Valuation of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), $560 billion
• Valuation of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), $397 billion, and AT&T (NYSE:T), $178 billion, combined: $575 billion
• Valuation of McDonald's Corp (NYSE:MCD), $218 billion, Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS), $205 billion and Sony Group Corp (NYSE:SONY), $154 billion, combined: $577 billion
• Valuation of McDonald's, $218 billion, and Home Depot (NYSE:HD), $343 billion, combined: $561 billion

The 10 billionaires on the list each gained an average of $57.86 billion and unlike some past years, all 10 had positive changes to their wealth for the full year.

Read Also: Elon Musk Pay Package Compared To NFL: ‘Imagine You’re Patrick Mahomes And Not Gonna Get A Salary’

List Changes 2025

The 2025 list of the 10 richest people in the world includes nine of the same 10 people from the start of the year, with several changes in placement.

Here is a look at how the order changed with the 2025 end-of-year rankings, with 2024 end-of-year rankings in parentheses:

1. Elon Musk (1)
2. Larry Page (6)
3. Jeff Bezos (2)
4. Sergey Brin (8)
5. Larry Ellison (4)
6. Mark Zuckerberg (3)
7. Bernard Arnault (5)
8. Steve Ballmer (9)
9. Jensen Huang (12)
10. Warren Buffett (10)

Page and Brin, who are co-founders of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL), saw big changes in their placement on the world's richest billionaires list thanks to gains in the valuation of the company they founded.

Alphabet was the top-performing Magnificent 7 stock in 2025 with gains of 65.2%. The strong gains for Alphabet helped the two billionaires each move up four places.

Huang was another gainer for 2025 with the NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO and co-founder entering the top 10 and staying there most of the year. Nvidia stock was up 34.8% in 2025 as the second-best-performing Magnificent 7 stock for the year. Nvidia stock has posted strong gains over the past three years.

Many of the other top names on the list held onto their positions or moved down the list. One name to point out would be Ellison, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Oracle.

Ellison was briefly the richest person in the world, surpassing Musk, after Oracle stock posted huge gains following quarterly financial results. The stock eventually gave away its huge post-earnings gains, but an argument could be made that Musk was the world's richest person for only 364 of the 365 days in 2025.

Dropping out of the top 10 richest list was Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who went from seventh place at the start of the year to 16^th place. The wealth of Gates was down $41.6 billion in 2025, with Bloomberg re-estimating his wealth after new philanthropic giving calculations were made.

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