A significant shift took place among the ten richest people in the world at the beginning of the year: half of them changed places in the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires ranking in January. But one thing has not changed: Ilon Musk is still the richest man on the planet, whose fortune is estimated at about $775 billion. Over the past month, Musk added $48 billion to his fortune, and is now almost half a trillion dollars richer than Google co-founder Larry Page (second place). His fortune is estimated at about $277 billion.
With his artificial intelligence and social media company xAI Holdings, which earlier this month raised $20 billion from private investors at a valuation of $250 billion, Musk is on the verge of becoming the first person in history to have a fortune estimated at $800 billion.
Musk became the first person in history whose fortune was estimated at $500 billion in October, $600 billion on Dec. 15 and $700 billion on Dec. 19 as the value of his two largest assets, SpaceX and Tesla, continued to skyrocket. Even the first-ever decline in Tesla’s annual revenue couldn’t disrupt his upward trajectory.
Page, the world’s second richest man, maintained the second-highest growth rate behind Musk for the third consecutive month, adding $20 billion to his fortune as shares in Google’s parent company, Alphabet, rose 8 percent. His co-founder Sergey Brin climbed two positions to No. 3 on Forbes’ global ranking of richest people, thanks to an $18 billion increase in his fortune to an estimated $255 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg also had a good month: shares of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, rose 8%. This was enough to increase his fortune by $19 billion, to an estimated $246 billion, and move him up one position to 5th place.
Larry Ellison was the biggest loser of January: Oracle shares fell 17%, reducing Ellison’s fortune by $34 billion to about $211 billion and dropping him from 3rd to 6th place.
Frenchman Bernard Arnault remained in 7th place, despite becoming the second biggest loser of the month: shares of his luxury goods conglomerate LVMH fell 14% and his fortune dropped by $26 billion to about $169 billion.
Spanish fast-fashion magnate Amancio Ortega finished the month in the top 10 for the first time since June, despite his fortune falling by $1 billion to about $145 billion. This was due to a 2% drop in shares of Zara’s parent company, Inditex. Ortega moved up from No. 11 to No. 9, replacing Steve Ballmer, who fell three places to No. 13 as Microsoft shares fell 12 percent and his fortune dropped $13 billion to about $134 billion. This is also the first time since June that more than one person has made the top 10.
Below are the 10 richest people on Earth as of Feb. 1, 2026, according to Forbes. Collectively, they are worth $2.6 trillion:
- Elon Musk
- Larry Page
- Sergey Brin (up from No. 5 last month)
- Jeff Bezos
- Mark Zuckerberg (up from 6th place)
- Larry Ellison (down from #3)
- Bernard Arnault
- Jensen Huang
- Amancio Ortega (up from 11th place)
- Warren Buffett (down 9 places)
