The question who has the highest networth in the world has a short answer that changes more often than people expect: Elon Musk has held the top spot on the major rankings for most of the period since late 2021, and his lead has been large. But the details behind that sentence are where it gets interesting.
The usual top of the list
Both Forbes and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index have placed Musk first for long stretches. His fortune is tied mainly to his stake in Tesla and to his ownership of SpaceX, whose private valuation has been repeatedly raised in funding and share-sale rounds. Press reports in 2025 described his net worth reaching levels far above anything seen before on these lists, with figures in the several-hundred-billion range. The number moved by tens of billions in a single week at times, so any figure in print is out of date quickly.
Who normally sits behind him
The runners-up rotate. Names that have appeared in the top group in recent years include Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Warren Buffett and Bernard Arnault of the luxury group LVMH. Who is second on any given day depends on share prices, and on the day, one share-price jump can shift the order.
Why Forbes and Bloomberg disagree
- Timing. Bloomberg updates after each trading day. Forbes runs a real-time list but also publishes a once-a-year snapshot, which can differ.
- Private company values. Neither outlet can see inside a private firm. Each applies its own method to value stakes in companies that do not trade publicly.
- Debts and pledges. They adjust differently for loans taken against shares.
Who has the highest networth in the world, counting history?
Comparing eras is tricky. John D. Rockefeller is often described as the richest person in modern history, with estimates that, adjusted for inflation, run to several hundred billion dollars in today’s money. Others sometimes named include Andrew Carnegie, the Rothschild family and, in a different sense, Mansa Musa of the medieval Mali Empire, whose wealth cannot be reliably converted into modern terms. These comparisons are fun but loose, and historians disagree about the method.
It is not only about people
Another way to read the question is by family or by country. Royal families and sovereign wealth funds hold far larger pools of capital than any individual billionaire, but the money is not personal property, and it is not counted on billionaire lists. Norway’s sovereign fund, for example, holds assets measured in trillions of dollars on behalf of the public.
How to check today’s number
- Open the Forbes real-time billionaires page and the Bloomberg index in two tabs.
- Note the date and time next to each.
- Read the company breakdown, since it shows where the wealth comes from.
- Treat the gap between the two lists as a margin of error.
For more on how these estimates are made, our guide on who has the most networth in the world covers the method, and our article on the networth of Elon Musk looks closely at the top name. The live list is at Bloomberg’s billionaires index.
What the ranking does not tell you
A list of net worth says nothing about income, about how much cash a person can reach, or about how much of their fortune is exposed to a single stock. Someone who owns shares worth two hundred billion dollars cannot spend two hundred billion dollars, because selling that much would change the price. The rankings are a useful scoreboard, but they measure paper value on a particular day.
A note on timing
Rankings are snapshots. A big move in one company’s share price on a Tuesday can reshuffle the top five by Wednesday, and journalists have a habit of writing a fresh headline each time. If you are quoting the list in a report, school project or article, write the date next to the name, for example “as of mid-November 2025”. That one habit makes your statement accurate even after the list moves on, and it signals to readers that you checked.
The short answer
So who has the highest networth in the world? As of 2025, according to Forbes and Bloomberg, it is Elon Musk by a wide margin, followed by a changing group of technology and luxury-goods billionaires. Check the live list if you need the figure today.
Figures are reported estimates and change daily. This is not financial advice.
