Elon Musk’s Record-Breaking Fortune Revealed In Forbes World’s Billionaires List

• Forbes has released its annual list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires for 2026, with Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin leading the way.
• In total, Forbes counts 3,428 billionaires that have a combined net worth of US$20.1 trillion (~AU$28 trillion), with 400 new billionaires minted since last year.
• As far as Australian billionaires, Gina Rinehart, Harry Triguboff, and Andrew Forrest are the country’s three wealthiest people.

According to Forbes, “there has never been a better time to be a billionaire,” and after reading through its list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires for 2026, it’s easy to see why.

First things first, and Elon Musk is back on top of the money mountain with a net worth that’s absolutely exploded in the last year.

In 2025, Forbes estimated his net worth to be US$342 billion (~AU$476 billion), and since then, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has more than doubled his money to a genuinely eye-watering US$839 billion (~AU$1.7 trillion). This makes him not only the richest person on the planet, but the richest person Forbes says it has ever recorded.

That number is so absurd it almost sounds fake, but the context is even more jaw-dropping, with his fortune surging thanks to the rising valuations of Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and X, proving to be a tidy reminder that the world’s biggest fortunes are built on tech, scale, and investor belief more than old-school bricks-and-mortar industry.

The rest of the podium is stacked with familiar Silicon Valley power, as Larry Page sits in second place at US$257 billion, followed by Sergey Brin at US$237 billion. Jeff Bezos is further back on US$224 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg rounds out fifth on the list with US$222 billion.

The broader billionaire boom is almost as striking as Musk’s lead, with Forbes reporting a record number of billionaires in 2026. Specifically, a total of 3,428 billionaires counting a combined net worth of US$20.1 trillion (~AU$28 trillion), as well as 400 new billionaires minted since last year.

So yes, Musk being number one is the headline, but the bigger story might be this: we’re now living in an era where a single person’s fortune can look less like personal wealth and more like the GDP of a mid-sized nation. In fact, only 22 countries have a higher GDP than Elon Musk’s current net worth, with the South African-born entrepreneur worth more than the other 198 countries.

Wild times, indeed.

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