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AI boom is now reshaping the economy and sending extraordinary amounts of capital towards the companies building it, and more importantly, their founders and CEOs. BestBrokers have released a new report identifying the billionaires whose fortunes have grown the fastest between July 2025 and July 2026.
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For this report, the team at BestBrokers analysed the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List for 2025 and 2026, using the Wayback Machine to compare billionaire fortunes year on year. They calculated both absolute and percentage changes in net worth, as well as average daily gains and losses, and examined the countries and industries with the highest and lowest combined billionaire wealth. The full dataset is available on Google Drive via this link.
“Elon Musk, world’s richest person and first individual ever to briefly surpass $1 trillion”
Data shows that Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and the first individual ever to briefly surpass $1 trillion in personal net worth, has seen his fortune surge, rising from $405.6 billion on July 27, 2025, to $725.1 billion on July 27, 2026.
This represents a $319.5 billion increase, the largest gain of any billionaire in the world, equivalent to adding roughly $875 million to his net worth every day over the past year.
Billionaires Who Increased Their Net Worth the Most Since Last Year
- Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX): +$319.5 billion or $875M/day
- Michael Dell (Dell Technologies): +$107.6 billion or $295M/day
- Larry Page (Google): +$104.3 billion or $286M/day
- Sergey Brin (Google): +$91.2 billion or $250M/day
- Giancarlo Devasini (Tether): +$66.9 billion or $183M/day
- Liang Wenfeng (DeepSeek): +$38.5 billion or $105M/day
- Changpeng Zhao (Binance): +$36.4 billion or $100M/day
- Thomas Peterffy (Interactive Brokers): +$28.9 billion or $79M/day
- Jean-Louis van der Velde (Tether): +$28.5 billion or $78M/day
- Paolo Ardoino (Tether): +$28.5 billion or $78M/day
Other highlights from the report
- SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has increased his net worth by more than any other billionaire, adding $319.5 billion in the span of a single year, with his net worth sitting at $725.1 billion as of 27 July, 2026. The surge, fuelled largely by the rising valuations of his stakes in companies including SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, amounts to an average of $875 million added to his net worth every day over the past year.
- Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell recorded the second-biggest increase in net worth, with his fortune rising from $129.7 billion in 2025 to an astounding $237.3 billion in just one year. This translates to roughly $295 million added to his net worth per day throughout the past year. The surge was driven largely by a sharp rise in Dell Technologies’ share price as booming demand for AI servers fuelled record revenue and investor optimism around the company’s role in AI infrastructure.
- Larry Page ranks third, adding $104.3 billion to his net worth to reach $263.2 billion, equivalent to roughly $286 million a day. Close behind is fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who added $91.2 billion to reach $242.9 billion, or around $250 million a day. Their fortunes surged as Alphabet’s shares underwent a major re-rating over the past year, fuelled by the success of Gemini, rapidly growing Google Cloud revenue and rising confidence that Google’s heavy investment in AI was translating into real commercial growth.
Rise of Stablecoins Billionaires
- Tether, the company behind the world’s largest US dollar-backed stablecoin, has been exceptionally profitable for its owners, none more so than co-founder Giancarlo Devasini, whose net worth quadrupled from $22.4 billion to $89.3 billion in one year, adding roughly $183 million a day. Former CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde and current CEO Paolo Ardoino also saw their fortunes jump from $9.5 billion to $38 billion, adding roughly $78 million to their net worths per day between 2025 and 2026.
- It is one thing to have billions of dollars at your disposal and grow your fortune consistently; it is another to join the Forbes billionaire list one year and rise into the world’s 50 richest people the next. That is exactly what happened to DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, whose net worth soared from $1 billion in 2025 to $39.5 billion in 2026. His fortune grew 39-fold in just one year, marking the largest percentage increase among all billionaires tracked.
‘AI Founders, CEOs, and tech entrepreneurs record 30-40-fold increases in their net worth’
‘AI continues to hit the market with a force akin to a tsunami, flooding industry after industry and sending fortunes surging in its wake. Founders, CEOs, and tech entrepreneurs are riding that wave to 30- and even 40-fold increases in their net worth, the kind of wealth shift that used to take a generation, now happening in a single year.’
– comments Alan Goldberg from BestBrokers.com.
The analysis is based on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as of 27 July 2026, with historical figures retrieved through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Researchers compared the estimated net worth of the same billionaires on 27 July 2025 and 27 July 2026 to calculate one-year percentage changes in their fortunes.
The full report includes the biggest absolute and percentage wealth gains and losses, as well as a breakdown of billionaire wealth by country and industry.
