The world’s richest people got even richer over the past year, Bloomberg’s top-500 billionaire list, published on Wednesday, shows. Some 77% of the billionaires who made it on the list saw their fortunes grow even larger, while others experienced certain losses.
Elon Musk remains at the top, with an estimated net worth of $235 billion. The South African-born billionaire first dislodged Amazon owner Jeff Bezos from the pedestal in mid-2021, retaining first place ever since.
This year, Musk saw his fortune grow by nearly $98 billion, according to Bloomberg. While his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has been in turmoil, locked into back-and-forth with advertisers and battered by various scandals, Musk’s flagship asset, Tesla, has enjoyed steady growth, further solidifying his position.
Bezos himself is currently in third place with $178 billion, narrowly outmatched by Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), whose wealth grew to some $179 billion this year.
Musk’s arch-rival and Meta owner, Mark Zuckerberg, enjoyed the second-largest absolute growth in wealth this year, with his net worth surging by nearly $83 billion. The two have long engaged in an open public rivalry and even planned to stage a fighting match, but the idea was ultimately scrapped. The growth, enabled by surging shares of his social media empire after the 2022 collapse, put Zuckerberg in sixth place with $128 billion.
Among the top-15, in fact, only a single billionaire saw his fortune shrink. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group, saw his net worth decrease by a massive $36.3 billion to some $84.3 billion, with the development putting him out of the top-10 list.
The massive loss – which actually became the largest one in absolute terms this year – was prompted by a large scandal around Andani’s empire, which erupted early this year. Namely, the businessman was accused of “pulling the largest con in corporate history” and “brazen stock manipulation.” The company, however, has firmly denied all the allegations.
Mark Zuckerberg Building Doomsday Bunker
Another media report said:
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly started work on a $100 million family compound in Hawaii that will include a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker featuring an escape hatch and a tunnel leading to two connecting mansions.
The project is located on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and is so secretive that carpenters, electricians and other contractors are muzzled by nondisclosure agreements, according to a report this week by U.S. media outlet Wired. “It is fight club, we do not talk about fight club,” one former employee told Wired. “Anything posted from here, they get wind of it right away.”
The compound stretches across about 1,400 acres, on land that Zuckerberg began buying in August 2014. A spokeswoman for the billionaire told Wired that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent $170 million to purchase the property, which they view as their family home.
Known as Koolau Ranch, the compound reportedly produces its own energy and water supplies, and onsite ranching and farming can provide the food. The property will include more than a dozen buildings with at least 30 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms combined, said Wired, citing property records and interviews with unidentified contractors.
Two mansions at the center of the compound will total about 57,000 square feet of living space, and 11 disk-shaped treehouses will be connected by rope bridges. The property will be dotted with guest houses and will include a large building with a gym, pools, sauna, hot tub and tennis court.
The bunker will have living space, a mechanical room and a metal door filled with concrete. Many of the compound’s doors will be soundproofed and operated by keypads. Some of the passages, such as a “blind” door in the library, will be designed to resemble walls. Dozens of cameras will be stationed around the property. Just one small operations building will have more than 20 cameras.
Wired based its $100 million cost estimate on building permits, saying the actual figure will likely be higher. “The cost rivals that of the largest private, personal construction projects in human history,” the outlet said.
A six-foot wall reportedly blocks views of the property, as well as the ocean, from a road fronting the compound. Security guards are stationed at the entrance gate and patrol the nearby beaches on all-terrain vehicles.
