The world’s 500 richest people added a record $US2.2 trillion ($3.3 trillion) to their collective fortunes this year, as booming markets in everything from equities to cryptocurrencies to precious metals sent the value of their holdings soaring.
The gains, which brought their combined net worth to $US11.9 trillion, were turbocharged by Donald Trump’s election victory in late 2024, and were only briefly derailed by tariff fears in April, when plunging markets caused the biggest one-day wealth wipeout since the pandemic.
Elon Musk, Gina Rinehart and Larry Ellison with their ballooning fortunes are among the winners of 2025.Credit: AP/Getty
Big Tech led the charge as artificial-intelligence euphoria continued to bolster US mega-cap stocks. About a quarter of all the gains recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index came from just eight individuals, including Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, Google parent Alphabet’s co-founder Larry Page and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Notably, though, that represented a smaller contribution than last year, when the same eight billionaires made up 43 per cent of the total gains.
When the year began, Musk was indisputably the boldface name on the list of the world’s richest. He became a major political player for the first time after donating nearly $US300 million to Trump’s reelection campaign, and spent much of early 2025 in Washington, DC, spearheading the administration’s cost-cutting efforts.
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However, it was Ellison, not Musk, who ended up stealing the show.
Fuelled by a massive run-up in Oracle shares as the longtime cloud infrastructure company ramped up spending on AI, he briefly overtook Musk as the world’s richest man in September.
Gains weren’t confined to the United States. While the S&P 500 Index posted an annual increase of close to 17 per cent, it was outperformed by a 20 per cent in the UK’s FTSE 100 and a 30.6 per cent rise in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng.
Other asset classes did even better: Precious metals recorded one of their best years in decades amid a rush to safe havens, while copper and rare earths also emerged as commodities of key geopolitical importance, with major holders including Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart and Chile’s Luksic family adding billions to their fortunes.
Before a recent selloff, crypto was also on track to beat equity returns for the year: Bitcoin surged to all-time highs following Trump’s election win and extended those gains as his administration approved a series of crypto-friendly policies.
However, a massive slide starting in October saw it wipe out all of those gains and then some, battering the wealth of billionaires including the Winklevoss twins, Changpeng Zhao and Michael Saylor.
Here’s a list of some of the year’s biggest winners and losers, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The winners
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $US249.8 billion
Yearly gain: $US57.7 billion
Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest man in September.Credit: AP
At 81, Oracle’s co-founder is taking on more day-to-day responsibility at the company and leading the charge on its huge, debt-fuelled push into AI infrastructure.
Ellison’s net worth surged $US89 billion on September 10 following a blowout quarterly earnings report tied to Oracle’s AI expansion plans, the largest one-day net worth increase ever recorded by Bloomberg’s wealth index to that point. Ellison has also been deploying his fortune in the media sector, personally guaranteeing the equity portion of his son David’s $US108 billion hostile bid to purchase Warner Bros Oracle’s ongoing plans to spearhead the $US500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project and take an equity stake in TikTok’s US operations could continue to reshape Ellison’s wealth into 2026 and beyond.
Elon Musk
Net worth: $US622.7 billion
Yearly gain: $US190.3 billion
After becoming the biggest donor of the 2024 election cycle, Musk spent much of the early part of the year in Washington as his Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding and initiated mass staffing cuts at federal agencies.
That came at the expense of his wealth, as Tesla’s stock was hammered over that period, in part due to backlash from consumers over his political activity.
Elon Musk’s net worth rebounded after he left the White House following a public falling-out with Trump.Credit: AP
But Musk’s net worth rebounded after he left the White House following a public falling-out with Trump. A recent insider share sale at SpaceX made it the world’s most valuable private company and pushed his fortune above $US600 billion for the first time.
Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders voted to approve a new compensation package that provides him a clear path to becoming the world’s first trillionaire if he guides the carmaker to an ambitious series of performance targets over the coming years.
Gina Rinehart
Net worth: $US37.7 billion
Yearly gain: $US12.6 billion
Gina Rinehart is riding the rare earths boom.Credit: Bloomberg
Few billionaires benefited more this year from a global focus on securing supplies of vital rare-earth minerals than Australia’s richest person.
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Largely through her privately held business Hancock Prospecting, Rinehart has amassed the largest rare-earths portfolio outside China and positioned herself as a key player in an increasingly tense geopolitical battle over control of the materials, which are essential for technologies ranging from semiconductors to electric vehicles.
She’s also attended events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and is an investor in Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly listed firm that operates the president’s social media platform, Truth Social. Rinehart increased the size of her stake by about two-thirds in the three months to June 30.
Donald Trump & family
Net worth: $US6.8 billion
Yearly gain: $US282 million
Since beginning his re-election campaign, Trump and his family have involved themselves in a dizzying array of deals which have enriched the clan at a scale unprecedented in modern presidential history.
It’s a lucrative presidency: Donald Trump with sons Eric and Don Jr.Credit: AP
Over the past 15 months, the family’s fortune has increased by about 70 per cent even after a recent slide. In the days leading up to his second inauguration, Trump and his wife Melania promoted a pair of memecoins bearing their names, which briefly soared in value before plunging.
Still, the Trump token has added more than $US200 million to the family’s wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Trump also co-founded the crypto platform World Liberty Financial with his sons weeks before the 2024 election. Since then, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump have jumped into crypto projects including digital currency miner American Bitcoin Corp.
One of Trump’s biggest assets, a stake in Trump Media, leapt in value in December after it announced a merger with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies, although it’s still down more than 70 per cent from its January highs. The US president was also handed a victory in August when a $US464 million civil fraud penalty was struck down on appeal, even as the court upheld the finding that he broke the law by inflating the value of assets like his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The losers
Manuel Villar
Net worth: $US10 billion
Yearly loss: $US12.6 billion
Villar, once the richest man in the Philippines, saw more than $US18 billion of his fortune vanish in a matter of days after shares of his property development firm, Golden MV Holdings, plunged more than 80 per cent following the end of a six-month trading suspension in November.
Manuel Villar, once the richest man in the Philippines, has seen large chunks of his fortune vanish.
Trading had been halted after Golden MV didn’t file financial results following the revelation that it had acquired a tract of land from Villar for $US93 million, but later revalued it at more than $US23 billion. Earlier this month, Villar also sold his full stake in water utility PrimeWater to grocery tycoon Lucio Co. PrimeWater had been investigated for possible “irregularities” by the government in July.
Bob Pender and Mike Sabel
Net worth: $US7 billion each
Yearly loss: $US17.7 billion each
After three sluggish years for initial public offerings, US liquefied natural gas provider Venture Global’s January listing was expected to be the start of a big year for new issues, boosted by a business-friendly US administration and a massive backlog of deals.
Disappointing IPO: Mike Sabel (left) and Bob Pender (right).Credit: Bloomberg
As Venture Global prepared to go public, its co-founders were poised to hold stakes worth nearly $US30 billion apiece in what was slated to be the largest energy IPO in over a decade.
However, the listing ultimately missed the mark: Tepid demand for its shares forced the firm to downsize the offering, and the stock has since fallen more than 70 per cent after disappointing quarterly results and the loss of a key arbitration suit to oil giant BP, one of its biggest customers.
Michael Saylor
Net worth: $US3.8 billion
Yearly loss: $US2.6 billion
Through the first half of the year, Saylor’s Strategy Inc was one of the darlings of the booming crypto market, which rose to all-time highs following Trump’s election win in November 2024 and continued to climb as the administration rolled out a series of pro-crypto policies.
Shares of Michael Saylor’s Strategy suffered as the Bitcoin price dropped.Credit: AP
Strategy pioneered the “crypto treasury company” model, holding billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet and regularly selling additional stock to raise cash with which to add to the hoard.
That model generated huge returns through early October, when Bitcoin hit fresh highs.
Wang, the co-founder and chairman of Meituan, China’s largest food delivery platform, saw his wealth plunge almost 31 per cent in 2025 after the company reported its first quarterly net loss in almost three years in November.
Meituan founder Wang Xing has seen almost a third of his wealth evaporate.Credit: Getty
Although Chinese equity markets notched a banner year — the benchmark Shanghai Composite gained 18 per cent – Meituan has suffered from weakening domestic consumer demand and three-way competition with Alibaba and JD.com. In response to domestic headwinds, Meituan has been pursuing overseas markets, recently expanding into Brazil and the Middle East.
