I noticed an interesting trend: in 2026, the question of who the richest person in the world is already has a completely different answer than before. The fortunes of top entrepreneurs are simply going through the roof against the backdrop of artificial intelligence and space technologies.

Elon Musk holds the first position with a sum of about $726 billion—an absolutely unprecedented level of personal wealth. SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, plus his moves in neurotechnology and AI—the guy is clearly not sitting still. No one in history has accumulated a fortune like this.

Next come the guys from Google—Larry Page with $270 billion, and Sergey Brin with $251 billion. They caught the wave of artificial intelligence early on, and it has paid off handsomely. Jeff Bezos is in third place with $255 billion thanks to Amazon and AWS.

The full top looks like this: Musk leads, then Page, Bezos, Brin, Larry Ellison with $248 billion, Mark Zuckerberg with $233 billion, Bernard Arnault with $205 billion, Steve Ballmer with $170 billion, Jensen Huang with $156 billion, and Warren Buffett rounds out the top ten with $151 billion.

What’s interesting is that who the richest person in the world is right now is determined less by a business model than by bets on the future of technology. AI, cloud computing, semiconductors, space—these are what really work. Plus, American companies dominate—that’s a fact. Those who held onto the shares of their projects from the very beginning are now sitting on a gold mine.

Overall, over the past few months, the top 10 richest people on the planet have added hundreds of billions to their wallets. This is not just wealth—it’s a completely different level of capitalization. If anyone else is still wondering who the richest person in the world is, the answer is clear. But the main point is that this money mostly belongs to those who invested in innovation.