Meet the new celebrities, heirs and business moguls on Forbes’ latest annual World’s Billionaires list.
The world added 390 new billionaires over the past year, according to Forbes’ annual ranking of the planet’s wealthiest people—more than one newcomer every day. That’s the second-best year ever recorded for new billionaires, after 2021, when the pandemic rebound thrust 493 people into the three-comma club for the first time.
This year’s class of billionaire newbies includes two iconic musicians, one very famous filmmaker, a tennis legend and the younger brother of the world’s richest person. These new billionaires hail from 40 countries and territories and together are worth an estimated $755 billion, or $1.9 billion on average.
The United States leads the world in terms of new billionaires produced, with 106, including the two richest newcomers: Edwin Chen(estimated net worth: $18 billion), founder of artificial intelligence firm Surge AI, and Peter Mallouk ($16.1 billion), the president and CEO and majority owner of financial planning firm Creative Planning.
China has the second-most new billionaires, with 55 (including three from Hong Kong), led by two AI model company founders Liu Debing ($9.1 billion) of Zhipu and Yan Junjie ($7.2 billion) of MiniMax Group. Germany ranks third, with 42 fresh faces, while India comes in at No. 4, with 30.
Among the most famous newcomers is singer-songwriter Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, who has amassed an estimated $1 billion fortune from years of music sales, touring and collecting art with her already-billionaire husband Jay-Z (estimated net worth: $2.8 billion). Meanwhile, just over a decade after he and other investors sold his Beats by Dre headphones to Apple in 2014 for some $3 billion in cash and stock, hip hop legend Dr. Dre finally joins the ranks this year as well, also worth an estimated $1 billion. Then there’s tennis great Roger Federer, who debuts on the list with an estimated $1.1 billion fortune, thanks to his 20 Grand Slam singles titles and his stake in Swiss shoemaker On Running.
James Cameron, the filmmaker behind hits like Titanic, Avatar and the Terminator seriesis another celebrity newcomer, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. The Canadian has won three Academy Awards and four Golden Globes in an illustrious career that has made him the second-highest-grossing director ever (after long-time list member Steven Spielberg, who is worth an estimated $7.1 billion).
Nearly two-thirds of the world's new billionaires are self-made, meaning they built their fortunes themselves rather than inheriting them. That includes the three 22-year-old cofounders of AI recruiting startup Mercor: Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha (worth an estimated $2.2 billion apiece), who are all younger than Mark Zuckerberg was when he became a billionaire at age 23. Midha, the youngest of the trio by two months, is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Also counted as self-made: Kimbal Musk, though he undoubtedly was helped along by his brother Elon, and it’s Kimbal’s small stakes in Elon’s giant companies, Tesla and SpaceX, that are the main components of his estimated $1.4 billion fortune.
The richest woman to join the list this year is Jennifer Gilbert (estimated fortune: $5.7 billion), whose divorce from Rocket Mortgage founder and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert ($27.9 billion) was announced in September. She is one of 76 female newcomers, all but 12 of whom inherited their wealth. The richest self-made woman newcomer: China’s Zhou Xiaoping ($3.8 billion), who cofounded Changzhou Xingyu Automotive Lighting Systems with her late father in 1993.
At age 20, the youngest newcomer—and the world’s new youngest billionaire—is Amelie Voigt Trejes ($1.1 billion), whose grandfather Werner Ricardo Voigt (d. 2016), cofounded Brazilian electrical equipment company WEG. She is three weeks younger than German pharma heir Johannes von Baumbach ($6.6 billion), who debuted on the list last year. Voigt Trejes’ 22-year-old siblings, Felipe Voigt and Pedro Voigt, are also newcomers and worth an estimated $1.1 billion apiece.
This year, the manufacturing industry was the most common route to a fresh three-comma fortune, as it minted 91 new billionaires producing products ranging from semiconductors and auto parts to paint and bicycles. China’s Wang Xin, worth an estimated $5.6 billion, is the richest newcomer from the sector, thanks to the industrial machinery firm he founded, Dtech Technology. Taiwan’s Lin Tsung-Chi ranks second, with an estimated $5.1 billion fortune from founding furniture fittings company King Slide Works.
The technology sector produced the second most new billionaires (70). Most of them have gotten rich from the AI boom, including Perplexity cofounders Aravind Srinivas, Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski and Denis Yarats ($2.1 billion each) and Cursor cofounders Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger and Michael Truell ($1.3 billion apiece).
The finance & investments sector rounds out the top three, with 51 newcomers to this year’s ranking, including the colorful financial advisor Omani Carson ($1 billion) and Greg Abel($1 billion), who took over for Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway in January. Abel is $148 billion poorer than his 95-year-old mentor, but, at age 63, should have plenty more years on the Forbes list to gain some ground.
