Top 25
Richest People
in the World

Adani dropped out of college after three semesters and started as a diamond sorter in Mumbai before becoming India's infrastructure king. His group operates ports, airports, power plants, and data centers.

Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in the US by revenue ($125B+). Charles took over from his father in 1967 and grew revenue by 6,000%. He has spent decades funding libertarian causes.

Huang co-founded NVIDIA in a Denny's booth in 1993. He worked as a busboy at Denny's as a teenager. Now his company's GPUs power the entire AI revolution.

Ambani lives in Antilia, a 27-story, 400,000-square-foot skyscraper in Mumbai that cost $2 billion to build. It has three helipads, a 168-car garage, and a staff of 600.

Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers, took his $10M severance, and built the Bloomberg Terminal, now used by 325,000+ finance professionals paying $25,000/year each.

Slim was the richest person in the world from 2010 to 2013. He controls most of Latin America's telecommunications infrastructure. He still works from the same modest office he has used for decades.

Knight started Nike by selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of his car at track meets. His memoir 'Shoe Dog' is considered one of the best business books ever written.

Ortega started as a shop assistant at 14. He still eats lunch in the Zara employee cafeteria and has never given a press interview. He is the richest person in European history.

Julia inherited her 42% stake in Koch Industries after her husband David Koch died in 2019. She is now the richest woman in the United States and one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes philanthropists in the country.

The richest woman in the world. Her grandfather founded L'Oreal in 1909. She is a reclusive Bible scholar who has published books on Jewish-Christian relations. She oversees a $250B beauty empire.

The youngest son of Sam Walton. Jim runs Arvest Bank, the largest bank in Arkansas, and sits on the Walmart board. The Walton family collectively controls over $260 billion.

Dell started building computers in his UT Austin dorm room at 19. He took Dell private in 2013 for $24.4B, then re-IPO'd in 2018 — one of the largest leveraged buyouts in tech history.

China's 'Lone Wolf' billionaire. Zhong was a construction worker, reporter, and mushroom farmer before founding a bottled water company. He has no political allies and rarely speaks publicly.

The eldest Walton son chaired Walmart's board for 23 years. In 2022, he bought the Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion, the most expensive sports team sale in history at the time.

Unlike her brothers, Alice left the business world to pursue art. She founded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, investing over $1.2 billion in one of America's finest collections.