5 minEconomy
Global billionaire wealth hits record $15.1 trillion, report finds
Altrata's Billionaire Census 2026 finds fewer than 3,800 billionaires worldwide now hold a record $15.1 trillion, nearly half the U.S. economy, with AI investments driving much of the recent growth.
The world's billionaire population remains remarkably small, yet its collective wealth has reached an unprecedented level. According to Altrata's Billionaire Census 2026, fewer than 3,800 individuals worldwide now hold a combined $15.1 trillion, an amount approaching half the size of the entire U.S. economy, which stands at $32.5 trillion. This concentration of wealth represents nearly 30% of the combined GDP of the G7 nations.
The billionaire population grew by 8.2% in 2025, marking the fastest pace of expansion in five years. However, the report indicates that these gains are not distributed evenly across the group. A small subset of 29 individuals, classified as "superbillionaires" with fortunes exceeding $50 billion, now controls $4.1 trillion, or 27.2% of all billionaire wealth. This marks a significant shift from 2017, when just 10 people held that status and controlled only 7.2% of the total. The concentration has accelerated sharply in the last two years, with the share standing at 16.3% as recently as 2023.
Public rankings point to familiar names among the most prominent figures, including Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and Warren Buffett. Maeen Shaban, Altrata's director of research and analytics and a lead author of the report, attributes much of the recent surge in wealth concentration to artificial intelligence. Altrata identified 150 public companies where the most billionaire wealth is held and divided them into two groups: those that made meaningful AI investments since 2023 and those that did not. The AI investors outperformed the rest by 23% in market capitalization growth over 2024 and 2025 combined.
"Hundreds of billions have been injected into that space," Shaban told Fortune. He cautioned, however, against treating the number as precise, noting that some billionaires built AI companies outright while others simply used the technology to cut costs elsewhere. "It's a very, very complicated thing to do," he said.
Geographic distribution also reveals notable patterns. New York gained 12 billionaires in 2025, bringing its total to 164, while Singapore and San Francisco grew at a similar pace. Hong Kong and London were the only two of the top 15 cities to lose billionaires. Shaban cautioned against drawing firm conclusions from these shifts, given the small populations involved. "With these really small populations, it's very hard to call it a trend," he said. He noted that the scale of AI investment in the U.S. acts as a pull factor, while some wealthy individuals have moved toward the Middle East amid regional conflict. "Mobility for them is not a luxury, it's a need," he added.
The San Francisco Bay Area alone is reportedly home to six of the world's richest people, including Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page, Brin, and Huang. Germany, despite having the world's third-largest nominal GDP, has no city in the top 15, a fact Shaban attributes to the distribution of wealthy individuals across the country, unlike the UK, where 60% are concentrated in London. About one-fifth of the world's billionaires were born outside their current country of residence, with that share climbing above half in Singapore and London.
The report also projects a significant wealth transfer within the billionaire class over the next decade. Altrata expects billionaires to pass $6.6 trillion to spouses and children, with the amount split among roughly 5,000 people, about 2,000 of whom are spouses. Shaban noted that while generational wealth will mint new billionaires, the majority will remain self-made. "More than 60, 70% are going to be self-made," he said. "The main contributor to future growth, in our opinion, is not inheritance. It's more like entrepreneurship."
Altrata's internal estimates suggest that by 2040, about 70% of the ultra-wealthy population will consist of people who are not in that category today. "That's just 15 years away," Shaban said. "If you've got banks that are 300 years old, 15 years is nothing."
