rankings<\/a> point to who many of these people are: Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and Warren Buffett dominate the list.<\/p>\nMaeen Shaban, Altrata\u2019s director of research and analytics and a lead author of the report, points to one cause above the rest: artificial intelligence. Altrata identified the 150 public companies where the most billionaire wealth sits, then split them into two groups: those that made a meaningful investment in AI since 2023, and those that did not. The AI investors beat the rest by 23% in market cap growth over 2024 and 2025 combined. <\/p>\n
\u201cHundreds of billions have been injected into that space,\u201d Shaban told Fortune. But he cautioned against treating the number as precise, since some billionaires built AI companies outright while others simply used it to cut costs elsewhere. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very, very complicated thing to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A geographical divide<\/p>\n
AI isn\u2019t the only thing that divides billionaires: so do urban areas. New York gained 12 billionaires in 2025, now bringing the total up to 164 in Gotham City, while Singapore and San Francisco grew just as fast. Hong Kong and London were the only two of the top 15 cities to lose billionaires. Still, there\u2019s no rhyme nor reason as to why some cities see this growth while others fall. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith these really small populations, it\u2019s very hard to call it a trend,\u201d Shaban said. <\/p>\n
He said the scale of AI investment in the U.S. is one pull, but there\u2019s a pull in the other direction, too, as some wealthy people have moved back toward the Middle East amid the war there. <\/p>\n
\u201cMobility for them is not a luxury, it\u2019s a need,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Public data suggests the wealth may be even more concentrated than the city rankings show: The San Francisco Bay Area alone is reportedly home to six of the world\u2019s richest people, including Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page, Brin, and Huang.<\/p>\n
Germany, with the world\u2019s third-largest nominal GDP, still has no German city that cracks the top 15, because, Shaban said, \u201cthe wealthy in Germany\u2026 are more distributed across the country than you would see, for example, in the UK, where 60% are in London.\u201d <\/p>\n
That same pattern shows up in who counts as a local: About one-fifth of the world\u2019s billionaires were born somewhere other than where they now live\u2014Musk a clear example among them\u2014and the share of foreign born climbs above half in Singapore and London.<\/p>\n
The great wealth transfer for billionaires<\/p>\n
And just as we\u2019re in the middle of the Great Wealth Transfer for all socioeconomic statuses, so too will the billionaire class experience this as well. Altrata expects billionaires to pass $6.6 trillion to spouses and children over the next decade, estimating that amount would be split among roughly 5,000 people, with about 2,000 of them spouses. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn 10 years, that could be double that,\u201d but said even with the minting of new billionaires through generational wealth, the greater number will still be self-made, Shaban said. \u201cMore than 60, 70% are going to be self-made,\u201d he added. \u201cThe main contributor to future growth, in our opinion, is not [inheritance]. It\u2019s more like entrepreneurship.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBillionaires are literally tiny as a population on the world stage,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\u2019s like a needle in a haystack.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even the broader $30 million-plus tier holds only about half a million people worldwide, he said. But the ability to reach millionaire status and above has gotten greater, for everyone. Technology, shifting regulations, and wider entrepreneurial opportunity have made that wealth level more attainable than a generation ago, even if it remains rare in absolute terms. By Altrata\u2019s count, the ultra-wealthy population grew roughly seven times faster than the world\u2019s adult population between 2005 and 2025.<\/p>\n
He expects the churn to accelerate. Altrata\u2019s internal estimate, not yet published, is that by 2040, about 70% of the ultra-wealthy population will be people who aren\u2019t in it today. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just 15 years away,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got banks that are 300 years old, 15 years is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How many students made up your college cohort? Odds are its about 4,000\u2014the same, if not more, than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[13652,28,101,1556,1432],"class_list":["post-841709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-billionaires","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-gdp","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}