It takes $2.9 billion to make the cut, up from $2.7 billion a year ago, also tying for the highest ever. Forbes calculated net worths using stock prices from September 8, 2023.
Elon Musk again tops the list, worth an estimated $251 billion—the exact same as last year, despite a wild 12 months that included him being forced to buy Twitter for far more than it was worth, watching Tesla stock crater, getting into internet spats with the likes of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the foreign minister of Taiwan, challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight—then adding tens of billions to his fortune as Tesla stock came roaring back. Musk is $90 billion wealthier than No. 2 Jeff Bezos and $93 billion ahead of No. 3 Larry Ellison, who added more dollars to his net worth than anyone in America over the past year, some $57 billion, largely thanks to the generative artificial intelligence craze helping push up shares of his software firm, Oracle.
