I recently looked at updated data on the wealth of the world's richest people, and honestly, the numbers are just shocking. What is happening at the beginning of this year looks like a complete break from historical norms.

Elon Musk holds the position of the richest person in the world with a net worth of $726 billion. This is simply unprecedented. Never before in modern history has one person accumulated such personal wealth. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, neurotechnology — each of these areas operates as a separate value generator. And they are all in the same hands.

What’s next on the list? In second place is Larry Page with $270 billion — Google and Alphabet continue to print money on the wave of artificial intelligence. Third is Jeff Bezos with $255 billion; AWS remains a gold mine. Then Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg. All tech magnates, all riding the AI and cloud computing wave.

Interestingly, the richest person in the world and his closest competitors are mainly founders who have held their shares from the very beginning. They didn’t just get rich from the growth of their companies; they own the companies themselves. This is radically different from previous generations of billionaires.

The driving factors are obvious: exponential rise of AI, cloud computing, space technologies, semiconductors. American tech companies are absolutely dominant. And the long-term bets of founders, which seemed risky ten years ago, now look like brilliant decisions.

The full top 10: Musk $726B, Page $270B, Bezos $255B, Brin $251B, Ellison $248B, Zuckerberg $233B, Arnault $205B, Ballmer $170B, Huang $156B, Buffett $151B.

Looking at the trends, the concentration of wealth in the tech sector will only grow. Whoever owns AI infrastructure and data owns the future. That’s why the world’s richest person right now is not a banker or an heir, but the person who built several revolutionary companies. Interesting times.