Top 10 Richest People in the World Right Now (October 2026)
Top 10 Richest People in the World Right Now (October 2026)
This list uses Forbes data as of October 1, 2026. It has some big stories: a new No. 2, a surprise AI-driven surge, and a lineup that is entirely American and entirely male. Let's go through it from the top.
How This Ranking Works
Most of these fortunes come from shares in public companies, so the numbers change every day. When a stock rises, its owner gets richer on paper. When it falls, the reverse happens. Forbes also adds private holdings, such as rocket companies and startups, using the latest valuations from outside investors.
This is why the order changes so often. Seven of the ten wealthiest people swapped places in the past month alone. Treat these as a snapshot, not a final scoreboard.
1. Elon Musk: $936 Billion
Musk is far ahead of everyone else. His fortune is estimated at $936 billion, which is more than double the No. 2 spot and more than six times Warren Buffett's. He is 55, lives in Austin, Texas, and has held the top spot since May 2024.
His wealth comes mainly from SpaceX and Tesla. In June, SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq and closed its first day of trading at a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion. That briefly made Musk the world's first trillionaire. He owns about 38% of SpaceX, which also absorbed his AI company xAI in February, plus roughly 11% of Tesla.
Forbes also leaves out large blocks of restricted Tesla shares and performance-based awards. Those would add a lot more if he met targets such as building a permanent human colony on Mars. So the headline number is, if anything, on the cautious side.
2. Jeff Bezos: $370 Billion
Bezos is the biggest mover of the month. His fortune rose by about $102 billion to $370 billion, which pushed him back to No. 2 for the first time since May 2025.
The jump came from his private companies. Outside investors valued his rocket company Blue Origin at more than $130 billion and his AI startup Prometheus at more than $41 billion. Bezos is co-CEO of Prometheus, his first operational role since he stepped down as Amazon's CEO in 2021.
Amazon is still the foundation of his wealth. He started it in 1994 as an online bookstore, and it grew into a giant in e-commerce, cloud computing and streaming. He now owns about 8% of the company. Bezos is 62 and lives in Miami.
3. Larry Page: $286 Billion
Page had been the second-richest person for ten months in a row before Bezos passed him. His fortune still grew by $8 billion to $286 billion. He was simply outrun.
Page co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998. He no longer runs it day to day, but he stays on the board of Alphabet and is a controlling shareholder. He is known for keeping a very low public profile. He is reportedly working on a new AI startup called Dynatomics, which focuses on manufacturing products.
He is 53 and has also made news for moving. He recently bought a home in Florida, apparently because of California's threat to tax billionaires' wealth.
4. Michael Dell: $268 Billion
Dell is the month's biggest story from outside the usual Silicon Valley names. His net worth rose by $28 billion as shares of Dell Technologies jumped 18%, driven by demand for its AI servers. At one point in September, this made him the second-richest person in the world for the first time.
Dell's story is a classic one. He started at 19 by selling computers from his University of Texas dorm room. Today he is chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies. He is 61 and lives in Austin.
He also gives. In December, he and his wife committed $6.25 billion to put $250 into investment accounts for 25 million American children.
5. Sergey Brin: $263 Billion
Brin's fortune grew by $7 billion, but he still slipped from No. 4 to No. 5 because Dell grew faster. His net worth is $263 billion.
Like Page, Brin is a controlling shareholder of Alphabet. Unlike Page, he has become more hands-on again. He came out of semi-retirement to help with Google's Gemini AI, and he is back working on Alphabet's AI strategy.
He has also been active outside the company. He gave away $1.1 billion of Alphabet stock in late November, almost all of it to his nonprofit Catalyst4. He has also reportedly spent more than $100 million to defeat California's proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Brin is 53 and lives in Los Altos, California.
6. Mark Zuckerberg: $251 Billion
Zuckerberg had the second-largest gain of the month. His fortune rose by about $55 billion to $251 billion after Meta's stock climbed 27% following the launch of its personal AI agent, Muse.
He is the youngest person on this list, at 42. He started Facebook as a Harvard student in 2004, and the company, now called Meta, also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. He remains CEO and owns about 13% of the company.
Not everything has gone smoothly. In August, Meta agreed to an $18 billion settlement in a lawsuit brought by 29 U.S. states. The suit claimed its social media sites were designed to addict children. That is a reminder that a big fortune can come with big legal bills.
7. Jensen Huang: $200 Billion
Huang is the face of the AI hardware boom. His net worth is $200 billion, up $9 billion in a month, and he moved up from No. 8 to No. 7.
He co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has been its CEO ever since. He owns around 3% of the company. That small share is worth a great deal because Nvidia's chips power most of today's AI systems. In October 2025, Nvidia became the first company ever valued at $5 trillion.
His background is unusual for this group. Born in Taiwan, he spent part of his childhood in Thailand before his family sent him and his brother to the United States. He is 63.
8. Larry Ellison: $179 Billion
Ellison was one of only two people on the list to lose money this month. His fortune fell by $13 billion to $179 billion as Oracle shares dropped 8%, which moved him from No. 7 to No. 8.
His year has been far more dramatic than that. In September 2025, he briefly became only the second person ever worth $400 billion, after a huge one-day surge in Oracle's stock. Oracle shares are now about half as valuable as their 2025 peak.
Ellison is also betting on media. He and his son David have made a $111 billion offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and the deal was expected to close on October 6. If it goes through, it would be one of the largest mergers in history. Check the latest news to see whether it has closed. Ellison is 82 and now lives in Florida.
9. Steve Ballmer: $161 Billion
Ballmer is the only person in the top ten who made his fortune as an employee instead of a founder. He joined Microsoft as employee No. 30 and ran the company from 2000 to 2014. He has held on to much of his Microsoft stock and says he is the company's largest individual shareholder.
His net worth is $161 billion, up $5 billion since last month. He is 70 and lives in Washington state.
He is also well known as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. In September, the NBA punished him and the team over rule-breaking around the salary cap. The penalties include a $30 million fine, a one-year suspension for Ballmer, and the loss of five first-round draft picks. The fine is small money for him, but the suspension is a real embarrassment.
10. Warren Buffett: $142 Billion
Buffett came back into the top ten this month. His fortune dipped by $1 billion to $142 billion, but he still passed Spanish fashion billionaire Amancio Ortega, whose fortune fell.
At 96, he remains the best-known investor in history. He retired as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of December, and his son Howard replaced him as chairman in September. Berkshire owns Geico, Duracell and Dairy Queen, among many other businesses.
Buffett is also the most generous person on the list. He has said he plans to give away 99% of his fortune, and he has already donated about $68 billion.
What This List Tells Us
Here are a few patterns worth noticing.
AI is driving the biggest gains. Dell, Zuckerberg, Huang and Bezos all benefited from AI in some way, whether through servers, chips, software or new startups. Even Ellison's rise last year was fueled by AI-related cloud demand.
Technology dominates. Eight of the ten built their wealth in tech, and the other two, Buffett and Ballmer, are tied to Berkshire and Microsoft. Bill Gates dropped out of the top ten in October 2024 after Forbes updated its estimate of his fortune.
The gap at the top is huge. Musk is worth more than the next three people combined. That is an unusual situation, and it depends heavily on SpaceX and Tesla stock.
Everyone here is American. All ten live in the United States. The richest woman in the world, Alice Walton, is worth an estimated $115 billion and ranks 15th overall.
The world's wealthiest people are mostly builders who benefited from technology waves, first software and the internet, and now artificial intelligence. Their fortunes are tied to stock prices, so they will keep rising and falling. A single product launch, an earnings report or a funding round can move a person up or down this list in days.
If you want to follow the changes, Forbes updates its real-time billionaires list every day. Check back in a month, because this ranking will almost certainly look different.
Source: Forbes, "The Top 10 Richest People in the World (October 2026)." All figures are in U.S. dollars and reflect values as of October 1, 2026.
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