It has been an extraordinary year for America’s richest billionaires. The US economy has grown by around 3 percent in 2024, but their fortunes have shot up far more.
Here, in reverse order, is a rundown of who has made the most from a rally in public (and private) markets that may soon unwind.
Together these 10 entrants made almost as much as the US government spends on defense each year ($850bn), which puts that astronomical yearly budget into perspective.
Marginal gains
10. Michael Dell—founder, Dell: $14 billion
Dell’s eponymous company, best known as a maker of PCs, slid out of relevance after an early tech heyday.
It has been reborn as an infrastructure giant of the AI age. Its machines are part of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built by Elon Musk earlier this year.
The stock has popped by 55 percent this year. That’s only a jump of $29 billion, but Dell owns around half the company. Cue a recent Christopher Mims feature in The Journal.
9. Larry Page and Sergei Brin—founders, Alphabet: $19-20 billion
Google’s founders stepped back five years ago from running Alphabet, the successor company to Google.
But they retain material stakes in the company they founded in the late 1990s (with early funding from Jeff Bezos). Page owns a fraction over 3 percent, Brin a fraction less.
That’s useful when the company you own increases in value by $650 billion, as Alphabet has so far this year.
The pair retain control of Google through super-voting shares that give them 51 percent of the company.
8. Steve Ballmer—former CEO, Microsoft: $20 billion
Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’ former number two at Microsoft, became the company’s CEO in 2000, serving until 2014.
His tenure was a masterclass in failure. The company’s stock fell by a third over those 14 years as other tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Google, and later Facebook—displaced the biggest name in tech from the 1990s.
The company’s slide into irrelevance was arrested by a new CEO, Satya Nadella, who made Microsoft the most valuable company in the world. (It’s now third.)
That was fortunate for Ballmer, who retains 4.5 percent of the company. That stock just funded a new stadium for the LA Clippers, where Ballmer can always be found.
7. Warren Buffett—chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathway: $29 billion
The world’s most famous investor is currently famed in markets for holding record amounts of cash after recent stock sales.
He sold two-thirds of a major position in Apple, the world’s most valuable company, which he started buying in 2016.
He is now sitting on $325 million in cash, which is almost 30 percent of the value of Berkshire Hathway, the investment vehicle Buffett runs (he owns 15 percent of its stock).
Berkshire continues to fare well against the market, unlike the vast majority of investors. It is up 28 percent this year, slightly more than the S&P 500, which is up by a quarter. (The tech-focused Nasdaq is up 29 percent. The Dow, which is only up 14 percent, is not an index anyone benchmarks against.)
Major gains
6. Jeff Bezos—founder, Amazon: $63 billion
It’s been a torrid year for Jeff Bezos on a front that matters to him: His space company, Blue Origin, continues to be wholly eclipsed by Elon Musk’s Space X, as it has been for two decades now.
It has also been a disastrous, or tumultuous, year for The Washington Post, the paper Bezos bought in 2013, and to which he pays periodic attention.
His moments of attention sparked blowback this year. But he was making money all the while, with his net worth rising by more than $1 billion per week as stock in Amazon—the company he founded in 1994, where he still serves as executive chairman—recovered and rose.
He owns almost 9 percent of the company, and funds Blue Origin by periodically selling Amazon stock.
5. Jensen Huang—founder, Nvidia: $72 billion
Huang—the three-decade founder behind Nvidia, the AI chip designer darling—benefited from this year’s most explosive spike in corporate value.
He owns 3.8 percent of the company, the value of which has increased by $1.9 billion in 2024: more than twice as much as any other company.
4. Larry Ellison—founder, Oracle: $73 billion
Ellison—long a forgotten name from an earlier tech age, like Dell—is newly ascendent after also making a major bet on the AI boom.
His company, Oracle, is a major provider of cloud computing (along with Amazon, Microsoft and Google).
That’s proven profitable for Ellison, who owns 43 percent of the company—and whose wealth has helped fund the late career of former British PM Tony Blair.
3. Mark Zuckerberg—founder, Meta: $82 billion
Zuckerberg, the only founder on this list to be immortalised in one of the 21st century’s great films, is still at the helm of the company he created and owns 13.5 percent of it.
Meta—the successor company to Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp—has been on an extraordinary two-year tear, increasing its value more than sixfold since a late 2022 nadir.
Its social media products seemed dated then. But the company just keeps making money, enjoying some of the strongest margins in tech (of 35-40 percent) and developing new AI capabilities (Llama, an open-source model).
That surge in wealth has helped fund Zuckerberg’s “Marky Mark” reinvention as a chain-wearing millennial with a plan to win over Gen Z.
Unreal gains
2. The Waltons—inheritors, Walmart: $148 billion
America’s richest family are the nepo babies and widows of an otherwise illustrious list of founders and CEOs (bar Ballmer).
Their wealth all descends from Sam Walton, the 20th-century founder of America’s biggest employer.
His wealth is now split among multiple heirs, including Alice Walton, thought to be the second-richest woman in the world.
Surreal gains
1. Elon Musk—founder, Tesla and Space X: $252 billion
There could only be one man who made a quarter of a trillion this year: Musk, the man at the centre of everything in a way few have been since Crassus was part of Caesar and Pompey’s first triumvirate, shortly before the fall of Rome.
Musk is involved in at least six major enterprises—surging values for Space X (which is privately held) and Tesla (which is public) account for his new fortune, but he has four other day jobs, as the force behind xAi, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.
He also owns X, the world’s most powerful communications platform, for which Musk overpaid, but which he has now turned into a means of directing democracy. He has a seventh task to fill his days: Remaking the federal government.
He has, in the meantime, made almost $5 billion per week throughout 2024.
And how to lose almost $50 billion
It wasn’t so fine a year for every deci- and centibillionaire. Two in particular suffered. Both hold their fortunes in fashion, in different ends of the market.
One, Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, saw his worth fall by $7.5 billion (Nike’s CEO was fired in Sept.).
But the year’s biggest loser (of value) was Bernard Arnault (and family). The CEO of LVMH—the so-called “wolf in cashmere clothing”—lost $39 billion in value as the market for luxury sank, dragging down its biggest player.
Arnault remains in possession of $167 billion. The billionaires are all right.
