The fortunes of the eight wealthiest people on the planet all dropped over the past month as tech stocks tanked.
Last update: March 1, 2026, 12 A.M. EDT
The world’s top ten richest people lost a total of $273 billion over the past month, as disappointing tech earnings and concerns over AI spending drove the tech-heavy Nasdaq down nearly 5%. The wealthiest person on Earth, Elon Musk, was the biggest loser, as his fortune fell by an estimated $68 billion, to $869 billion as of 12 a.m. Eastern time on November 1. That’s because shares of SpaceX, which account for nearly four-fifths of Musk’s net worth, fell by 11%, more than offsetting a 13% increase in Tesla’s stock price. But Musk is still more than twice as rich as his runner-up, Jeff Bezos, whose fortune dipped by an estimated $8 billion, to $361 billion, as shares of Amazon slid by 4%.
The second and third biggest losers were Google cofounders Larry Page (world wealth rank: No. 3) and Sergey Brin (No. 5), whose fortunes tumbled by an estimated $53 billion and $49 billion, respectively, as shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet dropped by more than 18%. Page and Brin are now worth $233 billion and $214 billion, respectively.
The next biggest losers were Michael Dell (world wealth rank: No. 4) and Mark Zuckerberg (No. 6), whose fortunes fell by an estimated $40 billion apiece, to $229 billion and $211 billion, respectively. Shares of Dell Technologies and Meta (formerly Facebook) fell by 21% and 15%, respectively, and Dell and Zuckerberg are now worth $229 billion and $211 billion, respectively. Altogether, eight of the world’s ten richest people got poorer over the past month, though none of their ranks changed.
Steve Ballmer (world wealth rank: No. 9) and Warren Buffett (No. 10) were the only gainers among the top 10 but like the rest held onto their same ranks. Buffett’s fortune increased by an estimated $13 billion, to $154 billion, as shares of Berkshire Hathaway climbed by 9%. Ballmer, meanwhile, saw his net worth grow by $1 billion, to an estimated $162 billion, as shares of Microsoft inched upward by 2%.
Forbes has been tracking the world’s billionaires since 1987. In March 2026, we found 3,428 of them for our annual list. Below are the 10 richest people on earth as of November 1, 2026 at 12 a.m. Eastern time, according to Forbes. They’re worth $2.8 trillion combined, down from $3.1 trillion last month. Stock prices fluctuate routinely, so these net worths typically change on a daily basis. Forbes tracks the daily changes on our Real-Time Billionaires list.
Key Facts
Elon Musk
is the richest person in the world, a title he’s held since May 2024. He became the first trillionaire in June. His fortune fell below $700 billion in July for the first time since December but rebounded in August to over $900 billion before dropping this month.
Jeff Bezos
became only the fourth person ever to be worth more than $300 billion in September. (The other two are Musk, Larry Page and Larry Ellison.) This is his second month in a row at No. 2, a rank he’d previously held in May 2025.
Bill Gates
dropped out of the top 10 richest in October 2024 after Forbes obtained new information that led to a significant contraction in his fortune.
All
of the 10 richest people in the world are Americans.
All
of the top ten richest people are men. Six of them are worth $200 billion or more. The poorest of them is worth $154 billion.
Who are the top 10 richest people in the world?*
1. Elon Musk
2. Jeff Bezos
3. Larry Page
4. Michael Dell
5. Sergey Brin
6. Mark Zuckerberg
7. Jensen Huang
8. Larry Ellison
9. Steve Ballmer
10. Warren Buffett
*As of November 1, 2026 at 12 a.m. ET. Ranking changes since last month are in parentheses.
1. Elon Musk
Net worth: $869 billion (down $68 billion since last month)
Source: SpaceX, Tesla
Age: 55
Residence: Austin, Texas
Citizenship: U.S.
On June 12, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, after his rocketmaker SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq and closed its first trading day with a nearly $2.2 trillion market cap. The company’s stock has fallen by 6% since. Musk, who serves as chairman, CEO and chief technical officer of SpaceX, owns a 38% stake (including options) in the rocketmaker, which acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence and social media company xAI in February. (xAI previously merged with X–formerly Twitter–in March 2025.)
Musk also owns a nearly 11% stake in $1.6 trillion (market cap) Tesla, plus restricted stock that could give him another 8% upon vesting (before taxes). The restricted shares were previously vested stock options that Musk received as part of his 2018 CEO performance award, which was voided by a Delaware judge in 2024 and restored by the Delaware Supreme Court in 2025. Tesla and Musk entered into a new agreement in April that turned the options upon exercise (which Musk did on June 16) into restricted stock that Musk will forfeit unless he remains at Tesla through January 2028 as CEO or “an executive officer responsible for the Company’s product development or operations.” To be consistent with how we treat other billionaires’ unvested restricted stock, Forbes then removed the restricted shares, which would be worth $115 billion (before taxes) if he were able to sell them now, from our calculation of Musk’s fortune.
Also not included in Forbes’ estimate of Musk’s net worth: huge sets of performance-based restricted shares that could boost his stakes in SpaceX and Tesla to as much as 47% and 29%, respectively, before taxes and the cost of unlocking the restricted shares. To earn all that stock, Musk will have to achieve lofty goals like growing SpaceX and Tesla’s market caps to $7.5 trillion and $8.5 trillion, respectively, and establishing a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants. On SpaceX’s earnings call on October 20, Musk disclosed that both companies have formed special committees to examine a possible merger, which would likely result in Musk forfeiting almost all of his performance-based restricted Tesla shares.
Originally from South Africa, Musk moved to Canada before his 18th birthday, worked a variety of jobs, enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.
In 2000, he merged an online bank he cofounded, X.com, with a similar outfit cofounded by Peter Thiel to form PayPal, which eBay bought in 2002 for $1.4 billion. He founded SpaceX in 2002 in El Segundo, near Los Angeles. In 2004 he joined Tesla as an investor and chairman, a year after it was founded; he was later granted the cofounder title. Musk famously cofounded OpenAI with Sam Altman as a nonprofit in 2015 but he left the organization’s board three years later following a failed power grab. More recently, Musk sued OpenAI arguing that he was entitled to compensation for his contributions to the firm. The suit was thrown out on procedural grounds in May, though Musk is likely to appeal.
Musk first became the world’s richest person in September 2021 and remained No. 1 for most of 2022—before falling from the top spot in December 2022. Musk became the world’s richest person again on June 8, 2023 and held the title until January 31, 2024. Musk became the world’s richest person yet again in late May 2024 and has not looked back. In October 2025, he became the first person ever worth $500 billion. In December 2025, he crossed both the $600 billion and $700 billion marks. His net worth first passed $800 billion in February. He has spent more than $440 million backing Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
2. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $361 billion (down $8 billion since last month)
Source: Amazon
Age: 62
Residence: Miami, Florida
Citizenship: U.S.
In a wide-ranging interview in May, the Amazon founder sounded off on taxes, including arguing that the bottom half of wage earners should not pay taxes at all, and unveiled scant details of a new AI startup called Prometheus. Bezos is co-CEO of the company, an “artificial general engineer” that will “make it much easier for engineers to design physical objects.” It announced that it closed a funding round at a $41 billion valuation in June. Forbes estimates that Bezos owns a 20% stake in the company. It’s his first operational role since retiring as Amazon’s CEO in 2021.
Bezos created the e-commerce giant in 1994 and remains executive chairman. The same month he retired as chief executive, he traveled to space on a rocket built by private rocket company Blue Origin, which he founded and has funded with nearly $30 billion. Blue Origin recently closed its first outside funding round, raising $10 billion at a $140 billion valuation. Forbes estimates that Bezos owns more than 93% of the company.
Before founding Amazon.com in his Seattle garage, Bezos worked at McDonald’s as a teen, graduated from Princeton and took a job in New York at hedge fund D.E. Shaw where he met his first wife MacKenzie Scott. Amazon began as an online bookseller at a time when few people bought goods online. The company also grew to dominate cloud storage and moved into movie and series production to feed Amazon Prime Video.
Bezos was the world’s richest person on Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list from 2018 through 2021; he dropped to second richest on the 2022 ranking, No. 3 on the list from 2023 through 2025, and No. 4 on the 2026 ranking. He overtook Google’s Larry Page as the world’s second richest person in September.
In 2019, Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorced; as part of the settlement, she got 4% of Amazon’s shares and he kept 12%. He has since sold and given away more of his stake and owns 8% of the company. Since Amazon’s 1997 IPO, Forbes calculates that Bezos has sold more than $49 billion worth of his stock. Through his Bezos Expeditions, he has invested in an array of companies, including Airbnb and software firm Workday.
3. Larry Page
Net worth: $233 billion (down $53 billion since last month)
Source: Google
Age: 53
Residence: Miami, Florida
Citizenship: U.S.
Page cofounded search engine Google with fellow Stanford PhD student Sergey Brin in 1998 and served as CEO until 2001 and from 2011 to 2015. Page now serves as a board member of Google’s parent company Alphabet and continues to be a controlling shareholder. He is reportedly working on a new AI startup called Dynatomics that is focused on product manufacturing.
In late 2024, the Department of Justice said Google should sell its Chrome browser in order to reduce the company’s dominance online. In response, Google said in a statement that such a move would hurt consumers and America’s technological leadership. The decision may have been one reason that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai attended Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. In the biggest antitrust case in decades, a federal judge ruled in September 2025 that Google does not have to sell Chrome.
Page was a founding investor in asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, which was acquired by blockchain firm ConsenSys in 2018. He recently bought a home in Florida, apparently in response to California’s threat to tax billionaires’ wealth. Google also reportedly signed a lease to expand its Miami office earlier this year. In October, Page’s spokespeople told Forbes that he is now a resident of the Sunshine State.
