I just noticed that the top 10 richest people in the world in 2026 look completely different from a couple of years ago. Tech entrepreneurs have completely reshaped the list of global fortunes, and the numbers are just insane.

Elon Musk holds the number one position, and this is not just the top spot — it’s a historic leap. The guy is sitting on $726 billion. For context, that’s more than the GDP of many countries. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, neurotechnology — he’s involved everywhere, and it all works. No one in modern history has had such a level of personal wealth.

Following him are other tech giants. Larry Page from Google holds second place with $270 billion — Alphabet is just printing money on artificial intelligence. Jeff Bezos is third with $255 billion, with AWS continuing to grow at a rapid pace.

The picture gets interesting further down: Sergey Brin ($251 billion), Larry Ellison ($248 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($233 billion), Bernard Arnault ($205 billion), Steve Ballmer ($170 billion), Jensen Huang from Nvidia ($156 billion), and Warren Buffett rounds out the top with $151 billion.

What’s happening here? First, artificial intelligence has just exploded the valuations of all major tech companies. Cloud computing is also growing exponentially. Second, space and semiconductors are experiencing a boom, and those who invested in them 10-15 years ago are now sitting on gold mines. Third, the US absolutely dominates this list — American tech companies simply have no competitors in terms of valuation.

Interestingly, almost all of these people are founders who hold their shares. These are not managers who received options and sold — these are people who believed in their companies from the very beginning and didn’t sell. That’s what you call a long-term game.