Billionaire

[5][6] As of October 2024, seventeen people have reached the status of USD centibillionaires, meaning that each has had a net worth of at least $100 billion.

According to the authors of the report, this Billionaire Effect is connected with smart risk-taking and willingness to plan and invest for the long term.

[13] Different authorities use different methodologies to determine net worth and to rank them, and not all information about personal finances is publicly available.

In 2019, Forbes counted a record 607 billionaires in the U.S..[14] Over the course of the 2020s, depending on the source and the year, the world's richest person has been reckoned to be Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and family, or Elon Musk.

Four were a result of death or divorce, including Julia Koch, and Jeff Bezos's former wife MacKenzie Scott.

[17] Very few college-educated billionaires pursued business interests in their field of study, with the exception of computer science majors.

More recently, in 2017 an Oxfam report noted that just eight billionaires have as much net worth as "half the human race".

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explains the future capabilities of his company’s " Starship " to senior leaders of the North American Aerospace Defense Command , U.S. Northern Command , and Air Force Space Command , April, 2019
Global share of wealth by wealth group, Credit Suisse, 2021
Global share of wealth by wealth group, Credit Suisse, 2017
The number of billionaires that, with assets combined, would own as much money as half the world population, and what transport they would fit on, from years 2010 to 2016 [ 18 ]