Tesla founder Elon Musk has dethroned Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.
He has achieved this height for the first time in his life, topping Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List for 2022, with a net worth of US$219 billion.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last year, Musk has been able to add $68 billion to his fortune.
READ MORE: Logan Paul buys ‘world’s rarest’ Pokémon card for $5.3 million, sets new record
This partly comes off the back of a 33 percent rise in the share price of Tesla.
The news comes days after it was announced Musk had bought a $2.9 billion stake in Twitter.
Needless to say, this week’s going pretty well for the billionaire.
Bezos dropped to the number two spot for the first time in four years.
Amazon stock dropped by 3 percent and Bezos gave $6 billion of his vast fortune to varies charities, hence the 2022 slump.
Interestingly though, there are 87 less billionaires in the world than there were in 2021 and 329 people fell from the exclusive list – the most in a year since the financial crisis.
Collectively though, these 2,668 individuals are worth a staggering $12.7 trillion. But this is down from the record high of $13.1 trillion last year.
However, where some falls, others rise – 236 fresh faces have joined the list of 2022 billionaires.
Among these are global superstars like Rihanna and a few surprising faces such as Peter Jackson. Yes, the man who directed Lord of the Rings.
On a country by country basis, it’s worth noting that Barbados, Estonia and Uruguay all gained their first billionaires in history.
Moreover, despite the topsy turvy year, 1,050 billionaires are wealthier than they were a year ago.
World’s youngest billionaire is 19 years old
On the list are 86 people under the age of 40, with 12 of those under the age of 30.
Among these are Melanie Perkins (co-founder and CEO of graphic design platform Canva) and the world’s youngest billionaire, 19-year-old German drugstore chain heir Kevin David Lehmann.
The country with the most billionaires is still the US. It has 735 this year, up from 724 last year. China is second with 607.
Unsurprisingly, Russia has had trouble retaining billionaires. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in a flurry of sanctions.
This decimated the ruble and sent the Russian stock market into free fall. As of now, there are 34 fewer Russian billionaires and the remaining 83 have all lost money when compared to 2021.
In better news, Forbes recorded 327 women billionaires from across the globe.
While many of them did inherit their wealth, 101 of them are self-made.
The richest among them is Fan Hongwei who chairs Chinese chemical fibre supplier Hengli Petrochemical. It is worth an estimated $18.2 billion.
Forbes’ top 10 richest people in the world
- Elon Musk – Net Worth: $219 billion
- Jeff Bezos – Net Worth: $171 billion
- Bernard Arnault and family – Net Worth: $158 billion
- Bill Gates – Net Worth: $129 billion
- Warren Buffett – Net Worth: $118 billion
- Larry Page – Net Worth: $111 billion
- Sergey Brin – Net Worth: $107 billion
- Larry Ellison – Net Worth: $106 billion
- Steve Ballmer – Net Worth: $91.4 billion
- Mukesh Ambani – Net Worth: $90.7 billion
