Now that she’s officially in her “era of billionaires,” Taylor Swift is one of the richest people on the planet. According to Barrons, Elon Musk has taken back his title as the richest person in the world in the annual list of billionaires, driven by the rise in Tesla shares and the valuation of SpaceX.
With a net worth of $231 billion, Musk outperformed LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault ($175 billion) and Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos ($185 billion), who came in second and third place, respectively, in the 13th Hurun Global Rich Report, an annual survey carried out by Hurun, a media and research firm based in China. Musk has topped the list three times in the last four years.
Swift’s estimated net worth of $1.2 billion when she joined the list was fueled by the money she earned from re-recording her albums and the proceeds from her Eras Tour.
With a net worth of US$158 billion, Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg came in fourth place. But since Meta shares more than doubled, the research claims that of all the people on the list, Zuckerberg saw the greatest increase in fortune.
The youngest self-made billionaire on the list, Ryan Breslow, 30, is a Miami-based entrepreneur and the chairman of the financial platform Bolt. He came into the billionaire list this year with a wealth of US$1.3 billion. There are 93 billionaires under the age of 40, despite the fact that the average age of billionaires is 66.
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There are 3,279 billionaires on the list this year compared to 3,112 the year before. Hurun revealed a 9% rise in the overall wealth of billionaires and a 5% increase in their number. These billionaires are from 73 different countries and represent 2,435 firms.
As of January 15, 2019, the wealth figures are correct.
The research claims that this is the first time that the rise in AI technology has been credited for more than half of the newly acquired wealth on the list.
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Hurun’s chairman and principal researcher, Rupert Hoogewerf, stated in a statement that “AI has been the major driver for wealth growth.” “Whilst [Nvidia president] Jensen Huang has grabbed many of the headlines as Nvidia broke through the US$2 trillion mark and catapulted him into the Hurun Top 30 as a result, the billionaires behind Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle and Meta have seen significant surges in their wealth as investors bet on the value generated by AI.”
China continues to hold the top spot with 814 billionaires, despite a decline of 155 billionaires, according to reports. There were 109 more billionaires in the United States, now at 800. As per the research, India has added 84 billionaires, almost tripling the number as compared to the United Kingdom.
