America’s wealthiest people have fortunes measured in hundreds of billions of dollars, led by Elon Musk, who sits far ahead of everyone else in the field. Behind him is a group that includes two Google co-founders, a Walmart family whose combined stake outweighs most Fortune 500 companies, and a 95-year-old investor from Omaha who still lives in the house he bought in 1958.
Quick Answer: Who Are the Richest People in America?
| Rank | Name | Est. Net Worth (Aug 17, 2026) | Source of Wealth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elon Musk | $864.2 Billion | Tesla, SpaceX |
| 2 | Larry Page | $283 Billion | Google / Alphabet |
| 3 | Jeff Bezos | $270.2 Billion | Amazon |
| 4 | Sergey Brin | $261 Billion | Google / Alphabet |
| 5 | Michael Dell | $255.1 Billion | Dell Technologies |
| 6 | Mark Zuckerberg | $202.5 Billion | Meta |
| 7 | Jensen Huang | $194.4 Billion | Nvidia |
| 8 | Larry Ellison | $192.6 Billion | Oracle |
| 9 | Steve Ballmer | $152.3 Billion | Microsoft |
| 10 | Warren Buffett | $143.1 Billion | Berkshire Hathaway |
| 11 | Rob Walton | $136.5 Billion | Walmart |
| 12 | Jim Walton | $135.7 Billion | Walmart |
| 13 | Alice Walton | $125.4 Billion | Walmart |
| 14 | Michael Bloomberg | $109.4 Billion | Bloomberg LP |
| 15 | Bill Gates | $107.9 Billion | Microsoft |
Forbes labels Rob and Jim Walton’s entries “& family,” reflecting wealth held jointly through family trusts; Alice Walton’s stake is tracked separately, which is why her figure carries no family designation despite deriving from the same Walmart holding. Public-stock fortunes update within minutes of market open; Bloomberg’s privately-held fortune updates once daily.
Key Takeaways
- Elon Musk is the richest person in America, worth an estimated $864.2 billion as of August 17, 2026, more than Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and Sergey Brin’s fortunes combined.
- Ten of the fifteen richest Americans built their fortunes primarily in technology, from search and e-commerce to semiconductors and enterprise software.
- The Walton family is the only retail dynasty in the top tier. Rob, Jim, and Alice Walton, Sam Walton’s three children, are each individually worth well over $100 billion.
- Warren Buffett, 95, is the oldest person on this list and the clearest example here of a fortune built through investing across many businesses rather than founding one technology company.
- Musk briefly became the world’s first trillionaire in June 2026; his tracked net worth has since moved down into the $850–$900 billion range as SpaceX and Tesla shares have swung sharply.
How We Ranked the Richest People in America
Ranking living billionaires isn’t like ranking a company’s annual revenue. Most of this wealth exists as stock, not cash, so it moves every time a market opens. Our primary source is Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires index. Where useful, we’ve added context from company disclosures, SEC ownership filings, and Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index to explain how a stake translates into a ranking, rather than to re-derive the net worth figures themselves, which we take directly from Forbes.
A note on confidence: fortunes tied almost entirely to one publicly traded stock, Musk, Page, Bezos, Brin, and Zuckerberg among them, are the most reliable figures here and update in near real time. Fortunes with meaningful private or diversified holdings, like Michael Bloomberg’s or Bill Gates’, carry wider margins of error, since private valuations are estimates rather than live market prices.
How Billionaire Net Worth Is Actually Calculated
Forbes values a billionaire’s public stock holdings at current share prices, then adds estimated private assets, real estate, and other holdings, and subtracts debts and pledged shares. Public holdings, the bulk of most fortunes on this list, update roughly every five minutes when markets are open, with a 15-minute reporting delay. Fortunes tied significantly to private companies update once a day, adjusted against industry-specific market indexes. That’s also why Forbes and Bloomberg sometimes publish slightly different figures for the same person on the same day, both are estimating, using overlapping but not identical methodologies.
The 15 Richest People in America
1. Elon Musk – $864.2 Billion
Musk’s fortune has taken one of the most dramatic rides of any billionaire in recent memory. On June 12, 2026, Forbes reported that SpaceX’s Nasdaq trading debut pushed Musk’s combined Tesla and SpaceX stake past $1 trillion, making him the first person Forbes has confirmed to cross that threshold. His tracked net worth kept climbing before pulling back over the following weeks as SpaceX and Tesla shares moved sharply in both directions; by mid-August his fortune had settled into the high-$800 billion range.
Why he’s on this list: Musk holds major equity stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, either of which would make most founders billionaires on its own.
How the wealth was built: Musk has said publicly that his net worth is “almost entirely” his Tesla and SpaceX holdings, with a small fraction held as cash. SpaceX has become the larger driver of his fortune since going public.
2. Larry Page – $283 Billion
Larry Page co-founded Google out of a Stanford dorm room in 1998 and has kept one of the quietest public profiles of anyone at the top of American wealth. He stepped back from Alphabet’s CEO role in 2019.
Why he’s on this list: Page holds a large Alphabet stake, plus Class B supervoting shares that, alongside Sergey Brin, give the two co-founders outsized voting control relative to their share of total stock outstanding.
How the wealth was built: Most of Page’s fortune has stayed in Alphabet stock rather than being diversified elsewhere. Alphabet’s advertising, cloud, and AI businesses have compounded for more than two decades, and Page hasn’t needed to sell a large stake to fund his lifestyle.
3. Jeff Bezos – $270.2 Billion
Jeff Bezos started Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994. He stepped down as CEO in 2021 to become executive chairman but retains a substantial ownership stake, according to his Forbes profile. Our retail billionaires ranking covers how his fortune compares to other retail wealth worldwide.
Why he’s on this list: Amazon reshaped American retail and cloud computing at the same time, and Bezos still holds one of the largest single-founder stakes of any company its size.
How the wealth was built: Amazon reinvested heavily into logistics and AWS for years rather than paying out profits. Bezos’s fortune today is diversified beyond retail, into Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and real estate, and he’s part of an investor group that recently acquired a stake in Liverpool FC.
4. Sergey Brin – $261 Billion
Sergey Brin, Page’s Google co-founder, holds a fortune that has moved in near lockstep with Page’s for more than two decades. Forbes rates Brin among the highest self-made scores it tracks.
Why he’s on this list: Brin’s Alphabet stake and Class B shares keep him among the small group of people whose fortune has scaled directly with one of the most valuable companies on Earth.
How the wealth was built: Brin stepped back from day-to-day involvement at Alphabet for years but has re-engaged more visibly as the company leans harder into AI, a business line that has added tens of billions to both his and Page’s tracked net worth over the past year.
5. Michael Dell – $255.1 Billion
Michael Dell built his company from a University of Texas dorm room in 1984. Dell Technologies went private in 2013, then public again in 2018, a maneuver that let Dell retain an unusually large ownership stake for a company its size.
Why he’s on this list: Dell’s large personal stake, held directly and through family trusts, is one of the biggest founder-held positions of any major public tech company.
How the wealth was built: The company’s pivot toward AI server hardware and enterprise infrastructure has driven much of Dell’s recent gains, a reminder that “legacy” hardware companies can still ride new booms when they own the physical infrastructure underneath them.
6. Mark Zuckerberg – $202.5 Billion
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook from a Harvard dorm room in 2004 and has controlled the company, now Meta, through a dual-class share structure ever since. His fortune has been volatile in recent months as Meta’s heavy AI infrastructure spending has periodically unsettled investors.
Why he’s on this list: Zuckerberg retains voting control over Meta despite owning a minority of total shares, a structure that has let him make long, unpopular-with-Wall-Street bets, like the metaverse pivot and now AI infrastructure, without risking his job.
How the wealth was built: Meta’s core advertising business funds nearly everything else, generating the cash flow that lets Zuckerberg direct tens of billions annually into AI research and data centers.
7. Jensen Huang – $194.4 Billion
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993. For most of the company’s history, Nvidia was known mainly for gaming graphics cards; the AI boom turned its chips into the backbone of most major AI models being trained today.
Why he’s on this list: Huang, a Taiwanese-American immigrant, holds a significant Nvidia stake through direct holdings and family trusts, a position that has multiplied in value as Nvidia’s market capitalization climbed past $4 trillion.
How the wealth was built: The large majority of Huang’s fortune remains concentrated in Nvidia stock rather than diversified elsewhere. When Nvidia’s stock moves sharply, so does his ranking on this list.
8. Larry Ellison – $192.6 Billion
Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977. At 81, he’s the oldest tech founder on this list, and one of its most volatile members; Forbes reported that Ellison dropped from the world’s second-richest person to eighth in roughly two months as Oracle shares fell sharply on investor concern over AI infrastructure spending.
Why he’s on this list: Ellison holds one of the largest founder ownership percentages of any major public tech company, built up over decades partly through Oracle’s own share buybacks shrinking the total share count.
How the wealth was built: Oracle’s cloud infrastructure business, built to compete with Amazon and Microsoft for AI workloads, became an unexpected second act for a company most people associate with 1990s enterprise software. Because Ellison’s stake is so concentrated, Oracle’s stock swings translate directly into his own net worth.
9. Steve Ballmer – $152.3 Billion
Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft as its 30th employee in 1980 and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO, running the company from 2000 to 2014. He’s now also known as the owner of the LA Clippers, but his fortune remains almost entirely Microsoft stock accumulated over three decades of employment.
Why he’s on this list: Ballmer is widely reported to be Microsoft’s largest individual shareholder, a position built entirely through employee equity rather than founder ownership.
How the wealth was built: Unlike almost everyone else on this list, Ballmer never founded the company that made him rich, he’s proof that sustained equity compensation at a company that goes on to dominate its industry can build a fortune that rivals many founders’.
10. Warren Buffett – $143.1 Billion
Warren Buffett bought his first stock at age 11 and has spent the decades since compounding capital through Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company he built from a failing textile mill into one of the most valuable companies in the world. At 95, he’s the oldest person on this list.
Why he’s on this list: Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stake represents one of the longest sustained compounding track records in American business, built through insurance float, disciplined stock picking, and acquisitions, making him the clearest example on this list of a fortune built through investing rather than founding a single technology company.
How the wealth was built: Buffett has pledged to give away the vast majority of his fortune, largely through the Gates Foundation, a significant reason his net worth, while enormous, hasn’t scaled at the pace of tech founders decades younger than him.
11. Rob Walton – $136.5 Billion
Sam Walton’s eldest son chaired Walmart’s board for years before handing the role to his son-in-law. Rob Walton hasn’t run the company’s daily operations in years; his fortune grows almost entirely from Walmart’s stock price rather than active management, a familiar pattern among descendants of wealthy families once a founding business reaches this scale.
12. Jim Walton – $135.7 Billion
Jim Walton runs the family’s private holding company, Walton Enterprises, and chairs Arvest Bank, the regional bank the Waltons have owned since the 1960s. Like his siblings, his wealth is tied almost entirely to the family’s Walmart stake rather than a separate business he built himself.
13. Alice Walton – $125.4 Billion
Alice Walton is the richest woman in America. She isn’t involved in Walmart’s day-to-day management, but her wealth remains tied directly to the family’s Walmart holding. Rather than the business, she has focused her attention on the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and, more recently, a medical school bearing her name.
The Walton Family’s Combined Fortune
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962, on a philosophy that still sounds almost too simple to have built the largest retailer on Earth: sell things cheaper than anyone else and make it up in volume. Together, his three children control roughly 45% of Walmart, a company that posted more than $713 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ending January 2026, making the Waltons the largest family fortune in the country. Our full retail billionaires breakdown covers how their combined wealth compares to other retail fortunes worldwide.
14. Michael Bloomberg – $109.4 Billion
Michael Bloomberg founded Bloomberg LP in 1981 after being laid off from Salomon Brothers, turning his severance package into a financial data terminal business that now dominates Wall Street trading desks. He later served three terms as Mayor of New York City.
Why he’s on this list: Bloomberg owns the large majority of Bloomberg LP outright, an unusually high concentration for a company of its scale that has never taken outside investors public.
How the wealth was built: Because Bloomberg LP is privately held, Bloomberg’s exact net worth carries a wider margin of estimate than the publicly traded fortunes on this list. Terminal subscription revenue is the primary driver.
15. Bill Gates – $107.9 Billion
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and topped the world’s richest person rankings for 13 consecutive years before stepping back from day-to-day involvement. He has since given away tens of billions of dollars through the Gates Foundation, a major reason his tracked net worth sits well below where an unbroken compounding streak would have placed it.
Why he’s on this list: Gates’s fortune is now largely diversified outside Microsoft stock, held mainly through Cascade Investment, his personal investment vehicle, spanning real estate, agriculture, and public equities.
How the wealth was built: Gates continues to give away a meaningful share of his remaining fortune each year, making him one of the only people on this list whose net worth shrinks by deliberate design rather than market forces alone.
Richest Americans by Industry
For this comparison, each person is classified by the primary company responsible for their fortune, not every sector in which they currently hold assets. Amazon is counted as technology here, even though it’s also a retailer, because AWS and Amazon’s technology infrastructure are central to Bezos’s fortune. Bloomberg is counted separately, under media and financial data, since his fortune traces to a data terminal business rather than software sold at consumer scale.
| Industry | Representatives | Combined Est. Net Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | Musk, Page, Bezos, Brin, Dell, Zuckerberg, Huang, Ellison, Ballmer, Gates | ~$2.6 Trillion |
| Retail | Rob, Jim & Alice Walton | ~$397.6 Billion |
| Investing | Warren Buffett | $143.1 Billion |
| Media & Financial Data | Michael Bloomberg | $109.4 Billion |
Ten of the fifteen richest people in America built their fortunes in technology, a level of concentration that would have been unusual a generation ago, when oil, industrial manufacturing, and retail dominated the very top of American wealth. It’s a useful window into the psychology of wealth at this scale: equity ownership in a company still in its growth phase, not salary, is what separates a well-paid executive from a member of this list.
What America’s Richest People Have in Common
1. Ownership, Not Salary
No one on this list built a multibillion-dollar fortune primarily from salary. Every name holds, or once held, a large equity stake in the company that made them rich, the extreme-scale version of a principle that applies at every income level: owning appreciating assets builds far more wealth than saving cash ever could.
2. Long Holding Periods
Page and Brin have held Alphabet stock for more than two decades. Buffett has held some Berkshire positions longer than most people on this list have been alive. Long holding periods are a recurring theme, wealth this size rarely traces to a single trade.
3. Concentrated, Not Diversified, Bets
Several of the richest people in America are also among the least diversified investors alive. Huang’s and Musk’s fortunes remain heavily concentrated in the companies they founded. Diversification is advice for people building wealth from a normal income; most people on this list did the opposite, staying concentrated in one thing they controlled completely.
4. Founder Control Structures
Zuckerberg, Page, and Brin all use dual-class share structures that let them retain outsized voting control while owning a minority of total shares, a structure that lets founders make long, unpopular-with-Wall-Street bets without facing a shareholder revolt over their job.
5. Reinvestment Over Extraction
Bezos ran Amazon at a loss for years to fund logistics infrastructure rather than pocketing early profits, the same instinct behind the two habits that matter most for building wealth at any scale: saving funds the initial position, and reinvestment turns it into something larger over time.
Billionaire Wealth in America: The Numbers
- Per Forbes’ 2026 World’s Billionaires report, a March 2026 annual snapshot distinct from the daily real-time tracker, the U.S. is home to a record 989 billionaires, more than any other country, and 15 of the world’s top 20.
- That same report puts combined U.S. billionaire wealth at roughly $8.4 trillion and the global billionaire population at a record 3,428 people, worth a combined $20.1 trillion, up $4 trillion from the prior year.
- China, including Hong Kong, ranks second globally with 610 billionaires; India ranks third with 229.
- On Forbes’ daily real-time tracker, the number of confirmed billionaires worldwide fluctuates from day to day with market prices, 3,401 as of August 17, 2026, a normal variation from the annual count rather than a contradiction of it.
- The fifteen richest Americans on this list alone are worth a combined $3.2 trillion.
Common Myths About America’s Richest People
Myth 1: Their net worth is cash sitting in a bank account. Almost none of it is liquid. These figures represent company shares, which can swing by billions of dollars in a single trading session. Selling a large stake to access that cash would itself move the share price down.
Myth 2: They got rich from their salary. Salaries on this list are small relative to total net worth. Most of these fortunes are decades of held stock, not annual compensation.
Myth 3: These numbers are precise. Every figure here is an estimate, particularly for anyone with meaningful private holdings. Treat all net worth figures, ours included, as informed approximations updated regularly, not fixed facts.
Myth 4: It’s all inherited money. Twelve of the fifteen people on this list are first-generation, self-made billionaires. Inheritance explains the Walton family fortune and little else here.
Frequently Asked Questions
In order: Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Warren Buffett, Rob Walton, Jim Walton, Alice Walton, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates, based on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires index as of August 17, 2026.
Elon Musk, with an estimated net worth of $864.2 billion as of August 17, 2026, built primarily on his Tesla and SpaceX holdings.
Alice Walton, with an estimated net worth of $125.4 billion tied to her family’s stake in Walmart.
The Walton family. Combined, Rob, Jim, and Alice Walton are worth roughly $397.6 billion through their shared Walmart stake, more than any other family fortune in the country.
Roughly $3.2 trillion combined, more than the annual GDP of most countries, led overwhelmingly by Elon Musk’s individual $864.2 billion fortune.
A record 989, according to Forbes’ 2026 World’s Billionaires report, with a combined net worth of roughly $8.4 trillion.
Constantly. Public-stock fortunes on this list update roughly every five minutes during market hours, so the order can shift multiple times in a single day. Larger reshuffles, like Larry Ellison’s fall from the world’s second-richest person to eighth in about two months in mid-2026, tend to follow a sharp move in one company’s stock price rather than a single event.
Because so much of his fortune sits in two concentrated stakes, Tesla and the recently public SpaceX, his tracked net worth moves sharply whenever either company’s share price moves. He briefly became the world’s first trillionaire in June 2026 after SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut before pulling back into the $850–$900 billion range.
Roughly 45% of Walmart’s outstanding shares, held through Walton Enterprises and related family trusts, which is why Rob, Jim, and Alice Walton each individually rank among America’s fifteen richest people.
Final Thoughts
The same story repeats across almost every profile on this page: nobody here got rich from a single good year. Musk didn’t touch a trillion-dollar valuation from one product launch, he built two separate companies over two decades and kept his stake in both. The Waltons didn’t inherit $397 billion in cash, they inherited equity in a retailer that kept compounding long after Sam Walton passed away. Ownership, held long enough, compounds into something a salary alone never can.