I recently came across interesting statistics about the wealth of the world's billionaires at the beginning of this year. The picture is simply astonishing — the tech sector has completely rewritten the rules of the game.

The richest person in the world as of January 2026 is, of course, Elon Musk. His net worth is estimated at $726 billion. This is simply a historic level of personal wealth that no one has reached before. The growth is driven by SpaceX, which is valued even higher, the expansion of Starlink, plus Tesla stock, and of course his influence in AI and neurotechnology.

Next on the list are predictably the tech giants. Larry Page from Google is in second place with approximately $270 billion. Jeff Bezos with Amazon rounds out the top three with $255 billion. Then come Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg — all in the range of $200-250 billion.

What’s interesting is that this is no coincidence. Artificial intelligence and cloud computing have just skyrocketed in value. Space technologies, semiconductors — all of this is growing exponentially. American tech companies are dominating like never before. And if you are a founder who has held stocks for many years — here’s the result.

It can be said that the richest person in the world is now not just wealthy, but has reached a completely new order of magnitude. And this is mainly because the tech sector has been overvalued many times over. It’s fascinating to see how quickly rankings change in the era of AI and innovation.