Technology company owners, notably the owners of top social media platforms and e-commerce sites, dominated the "World's Billionaires List 2024" published by American magazine Forbes this week.
Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company, topped the list as the richest person in the world for the second time, with a net worth of $233 billion.
Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Neuralink, and X, came in second with a net worth of $195 billion. He was also placed second last year, with his fortune calculated at $180 billion.
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon, came in third. He was on the rise, especially at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as he managed to increase his net worth from $113 billion in 2020 to $177 billion only a year later.
He had a fortune of $171 billion in 2022, though this figure fell to $114 billion in 2023.
Nonetheless, Bezos's fortunes rose again this year, as he achieved a net worth of $194 billion, according to Forbes.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the tech conglomerate Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, was in the limelight as one of the people who increased their wealth the most on the list.
Zuckerberg ranked 16th in last year's Forbes list with a value of $64.4 billion. He almost tripled this figure in 2024, reaching $177 billion and ranking fourth in the list.
Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, ranked fifth with a net worth of $141 billion, while Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, ranked seventh with a net worth of $128 billion.
Steve Balmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, was ranked eighth in the annual rich list with $121 billion. He was followed by Larry Page, one of Google's founders, who had $114 billion and was ranked 10th.
Sergey Brin, who, together with Page, is co-founder of Google, has reserved 11th place on the list with $110 billion.
Although Chinese tech company executives were not among the top 10, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance and owner of TikTok, reserved the 27th position with a net worth of $43.4 billion.
"What a year it's been for the planet's billionaires, whose fortunes continue to swell as global stock markets shrug off war, political unrest and lingering inflation," the magazine said in the opening statement preceding the list of billionaires.
"There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021," Forbes said.
Quoting high on the list were Spanish businessperson Amancio Ortega, founder of fashion group Inditex, highly recognized for its Zara brand, who claimed the 13th spot with a net worth of $103 billion, just a place behind Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg and former New York mayor, at the net worth of $106 billion.
Dozens of new names have made it onto the list of the world's billionaires, Forbes has revealed, with both Taylor Swift and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman making an appearance for the first time.
This year, 27 names from Türkiye also found their place on Forbes' Billionaires List. Yıldız Holding Board Member Murat Ülker ranked first on the list of Türkiye's billionaires, whose wealth was recorded at $5 billion.